Most people do not dream about spending every waking hour with strangers inside a metal capsule that is the size of a small studio apartment for weeks on end. But some people do, as shown by the 400 people who applied this year to live, work and sleep in NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog. It is a three-story habitat built to resemble the confinement of space missions. NASA has spent the last several month shuffling groups of four volunteers in and out of the habitat and studying their behavior and teamwork dynamics. The groups live in the habitat for 45-days, which is about the same time as a journey to an asteroid to collect and return soil samples. These test subjects will inform procedures and protocols necessary for future missions to Mars and deep space. Everything that they do, and everything that happens, while in the metal tube, will someday be folded into guidelines for keeping astronauts healthy and happy on long-term missions.
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