Whitefish scientist describes 'year on Mars'

POLSON – To many, living for a year in a solar-powered dome high atop a Hawaiian volcano might seem like technological experiment.

For Whitefish scientist Carmel Johnston and five other members of a NASA-funded research project, it was a test of

mental fortitude.

“They wanted to see what would make people crack,” Johnston told a large crowd gathered at the Mission Mountain Audubon Society’s monthly meeting on Dec. 1. “So of course I volunteered.”

As commander of the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, Johnston and her crew mates endured the Martian lifestyle for a total of 12 months as part of a study aimed at learning how to choose the appropriate team for a mission to the red planet.

Communications were limited to fellow crew members and intermittent emails to mission command. Johnston and fellow participants lived, worked, ate and slept in the 36-foot diameter dome, leaving to explore the surrounding lava strewn landscape only when fully cloaked in mock space suits.

While the replicated life foreign planted as closely as possible, residing on earth afforded a few sparse luxuries.

“We didn’t have to drink our own urine,” she said. “Which was cool.”

As a soil scientist, however, Johnston found another use for the fluid: plant fertilizer.

“I really despise flushing urine down the drain now,” she said. “It’s such a waste.”

Such introspective discoveries were commonplace in the dome, Johnston said. She also discovered that she was a stress cleaner.

“It turns out it wasn’t the worst habit to have,” she said. “The dome was clean.”

As was expected, Johnston said everyday annoyances also emerged among her diverse crew, composed of a French astrobiologist, a German physicist, a fellow Montanan specializing in space architecture, a drone pilot from Texas and an American doctor.

One of biggest irritants Johnston noticed was the particularly noisy treadmill, which served as a constant reminder of the trade-offs that come with living in a confined space.

“You didn’t realize how loud it was until other people used it,” she said.

Another quirk involved bathroom time. Because of the crew’s limited water supply, they agreed to try and take the shortest showers possible. Nevertheless, Johnston said someone would inevitably sacrifice crew resources for personal pleasure, and splurge for a 20-minute wash.

“That was an interesting point,” she said. “You can do all the good in the world and it only takes one person to ruin it for you.”

To pass the time, one Johnston’s main outlets became cooking, or as she said, “whatever you can make out of freeze dried or powdered food.”

Despite an overall sense of crew camaraderie, Johnston said the duration of the mission was an unavoidable reality. She said that at one point crew members began asking for pets, a request to which mission control responded, “Powdered or freeze dried?”

“Humor becomes really important,” she said.

But regardless of the hardships, all six participants lasted the entire length of the study, even though Johnston said in theory there was a door they could have left through at any time.

When the crew emerged from the dome in August, they were greeted by news media frenzy.

Since returning to Montana, Johnston has spoken to various groups and school classes about the experience. Other than being slightly more annoyed by background noise than in the past, she said the transition back to normal life has proceeded relatively smoothly.

While researchers will likely take years to draw any conclusions from the dome experiment, Johnston gave a hint at an overarching theme that may emerge.

When asked by the crowd if she would do it again, Johnston responded, “Yeah, if I could choose my own crew.”