SKIRMISHER

Next summer, from May 1 to August 30, six lucky human beings who anyway love to dress up like Buzz Aldrin will be allowed to consummate their teenage wet dreams of playing as astronauts — by actually playing in an astronaut-like mission.

If your idea of extreme fun is living for four months in a metal can in the middle of frozen nowhere, this adventure/dry run for future Mars-bound missions is probably your Holy Shit.

This Arctic-based learning session will have one important side-subject: “How to manage boredom and isolation.”

Plunked in the middle of the most Mars-like spot on Earth, the station is surrounded by polar desert near the 23 million-year-old Haughton crater. The temperature during the summer varies between 30 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the terrain is bare of most vegetation.

The six researchers will spend four months roaming the barren landscape in a simulated space suit, returning home at the end of each day to a two-story, 8-meter-diameter living and work space modeled on the structure NASA recommends for Martian housing.

“Compared to other environments on Earth, Devon Island is one step closer to Mars,” said Pascal Lee, planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and chairman of the Mars Institute. “It is colder than most of the Earth, drier than most of the Earth, and has less vegetation than most of the Earth.”

For more thrilling pictures and chunky blocks of text, click here.

via WIRED

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