- The Mars Desert Research Station
is a facility where we
can simulate martian
life for a couple weeks and living
as if we were astronauts on Mars.
The Mission 202 will be our second
year as an all Purdue crew.
Last year we were called Boilers2Mars,
and this year we are MartianMakers.
What we are doing will help
future missions to Mars,
will help bring humans to Mars, so we are
actually being people
that are making martians.
- I was always interested in going to the
Mars Desert Research
Station because I know
very little about chemistry on Mars or
in space in general, it's not something
that's ever been covered in my classes.
That kind of intrigued me and I kind of
wanted to know more about chemistry and
how it works in a different environment.
- We got a few differences from last year.
We got more departments
from Purdue represented,
we have a crew of three
women and three men,
so it's very well
balanced, and we actually
having some of the research projects will
complete what we started last year.
We have a biological
study of how the bacteria
we bring in the habitat
propagate to our plants
that we are cultivating, but we also have
completely new studies on
what we do with our waste,
or how the radiations can
effect us in the environment.
So we got a lot new exciting
experience that we'll have,
and we'll do a lot of astronomy.
- I'm looking forward just to
the simulation environment,
it's something that
I've never done before.
It's a very new experience
and just the research
is all brand new, so I think
just the adventure of it.
- I went there and I expected
to always keep in the
back of my mind, this is a
simulation, so it's okay,
but then when we actually
closed the hatch,
and we're in the habitat
it felt so much different.
Whenever other people went on excursion,
I wasn't happy behind the
window, and I know that
in simulation I couldn't go outside,
because I wasn't wearing my flight suit.
So this touches a lot of the psychological
and social aspects of that.
I wanted to prove myself
last year and see,
can I survive for two weeks with six
other people in a small habitat?
We had been told there's
been crews that had
fist fights, there's been crew that just
people stormed out of the environment.
We had to figure out ways
to keep everybody cool
in case something happens,
and we had a lot of fun.
We even created a new game,
like we created a card game.
Now we are all close friends
and it was a great experience.
(inspirational music)
