The Mars Society is looking for volunteers who want to experience what it would be like to live on Mars. Don’t worry, you do not need to spend months traveling to get there, but you can experience the cold and isolation of the Red Planet while never leaving the Blue Planet.
The Mars Society is looking for six volunteers who will help to reactivate its Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), which is located on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic and has not operated since 2017. This location creates a Mars-like environment that can be used to anticipate some of the issues future astronauts will experience on Mars.
What will you do? The site notes:
The team will spend the first half of this period working to repair and upgrade the station. It will then spend the second half of the visit exercising the station with a Mars mission simulation during which it will attempt to conduct a program of sustained geological and microbiological exploration while operating under Mars mission constraints.
The mission will take place from June through August 2023, so you do not have a lot of time to get prepared. It will be challenging work. Not only will you face aggressive Martians (in this case local bears), but you will have to assist with the financing of the mission. Each of the six volunteers will need to arrive with $20,000 in sponsorship funding. That said, you will not need to bring your own sleeping bag, as “…all supplies, mission equipment, training, firearms, transportation to the Arctic and transportation and housing while on site.”
Interested? You can read more about it here and reach out to the Mars Society at arctic-mission@marssociety.org.
The Mars Society also runs the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. The site runs an eight month field season for professional scientists, engineers, and college students of all levels that trains participants for human activities on Mars.
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