NASA Opens Job Vacancy For Placement On Artificial Mars

Life simulation on Mars (ScienceMag)

JAKARTA – The United States space agency, NASA, is looking for volunteers to be placed on an artificial Mars planet. Accepted volunteers will undergo a simulation of life on Mars intended for exploration missions on the planet.

NASA announced the opening of applications starting Friday, August 6, 2021 yesterday and they will only take four volunteers. The plan is for the volunteers to be placed in Mars Dune Alpha, a Mars simulation environment located at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

Launching News Sky, the Mars clone is 1,700 square meters made of 3D printers. Volunteers will eat space food prepared.

The four volunteers will be faced with the difficulties of living life on Mars including spacewalks, limited food supplies, limited communication and faulty equipment. NASA will begin the simulation in the fall of 2022.

"We want to understand how humans work on it, we see a realistic Mars situation," said scientist Grace Douglas.

Those interested in volunteering for NASA must meet three requirements: a master's degree in science, mathematics or engineering and experience as a pilot.

However, the vacancy to volunteer is only for United States citizens, especially those aged 30 to 55 years. In addition to the requirements mentioned above, applicants are also required to have a healthy body condition, not motion sickness and have no problems with dieting.

A Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield said that these requirements prove that NASA is actually looking for people with the ability to approach the skills of astronauts. Thus, the volunteers will be placed in conditions similar to the Martian environment.

It's not just the United States that has carried out this experiment. Previously, Russia had done the same thing by placing volunteers on an artificial Mars called Mars 500. However, the test was declared a failure because the volunteers had abilities like ordinary humans.

On the other hand, NASA's rover, Perseverance, which has been stationed on Mars, has reportedly failed to carry out its first mission, which is to take rock samples from the Red Planet. The Perseverance rover has drilled on the Martian surface, which is located in the Martian Jazero crater, but the rover has not been able to extract finger-sized rock plates.