The Mars Society - Main Site

MARS Project Overview (continued)

Each station will serve as a useful field research facility at selected Mars analogue sites on Earth. Such sites will be selected on the basis of how they will help further our understanding of the geology, biology, and environmental conditions on the Earth and on Mars. In order to achieve this, each station must provide safe shelter and be an effective field laboratory.

The stations will generate public support for sending humans to Mars. They will inform and inspire audiences around the world, and will serve as the foundation of a series of bold steps that will pave the way to the eventual human exploration of Mars.

Each MARS unit will be operated by Mars Society researchers and will be made available to selected space agencies and to scientists, engineers and other professionals from a variety of institutions around the globe to support science investigations and exploration research at Mars analogue sites. As an operational test bed, each station will serve as a central element in support of parallel studies of the technologies, strategies, architectural design, and human factors involved in human missions to Mars. The facilities will also bring to the field compact laboratories in which in-depth data analysis can begin before scientists leave the field site and return to their home institutions. Each station will help develop the capabilities needed on Mars to allow productive field research during the long months of a human sojourn. The facilities will evolve through time to achieve increasing levels of realism and fidelity with the ultimate goal of supporting the actual training of Mars-bound astronauts.

Project Inception

The MARS project was conceived at the founding conference of the Mars Society held in Boulder, Colorado in 1998. The first unit in the project, the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (F-MARS) became operational on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic in July 2000. Since that time, the unit has been the home to several research crews selected by the Mars Society, who have been responsible for initiating a broad range of Mars-related research operations.

Devon Island is an ideal Mars Analogue site. It not only has much in common with the geomorphology of Mars, it also exists within the Arctic Circle, and so is devoid of any real vegetation and is subject to temperature ranges that mimic the milder temperatures on Mars. These factors have allowed teams working there to not only study the kind of features and geology we will find on Mars, they have also allowed crews to do so in an environment remarkably similar to that of the surface of Mars.

In February 2002, the second of the MARS units became operational in Utah, in the South Western United States. Built along similar lines to the F-MARS, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) has been located in another region that bears remarkable similarity to the surface of Mars. However, the overall geology of the environment is markedly different to that of Devon Island, thus allowing the Mars Society to extend our research and experiments. Furthermore, being located on the continental United States, the MDRS also presents the Society with the opportunity to operate field studies beyond the time constraints presented by Devon Island's more northerly and remote location.

Together, the F-MARS and MDRS have already greatly extended our understanding of how humans will operate when they go to Mars. They have also enabled us to test equipment and systems that will be of vital importance on Mars. Perhaps most importantly of all, they have served as a media focal point, bring the message of the potential of the human exploration of Mars directly into people's living rooms through the broadcasting of a range of documentary and news features on both of the stations.

Now, with the advent of the European Mars Analogue Research Station (Euro-MARS), the Mars Society stands on the cusp of a bold new expansion of the MARS programme, one that offers us the opportunity to take a gigantic step closer to actually sending humans to Mars.