What we're doing here (on Mars)

The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is an analog simulation facility. This means it's in a place that's a lot like Mars (the Utah desert), and so we pretend we're actually on Mars in order to practice living and working there. The easiest thing to simulate is operational procedures, meaning that we always wear "spacesuits" outside, recycle our water, and bring all our own food with us (Crew 67 will actually be eating freeze-dried food, just like astronauts would, for two weeks) - just like we would if we were on Mars. We don't have to live like this on Earth, but we do on Mars. So we practice on Earth to make ourselves ready for Mars.

We also practice doing research, because being on Mars will doubtless raise a lot of questions we would like to answer. The crew has a commander, a science officer, three engineers, and three researchers. In my next posts, I will describe each crewmember a little bit more.