Sending humans to Mars has been a dream for the United States. The country’s space agency NASA is now ready to take another step in this direction. To prepare a plan for human survival on the Red Planet, NASA is looking for four people to live in Mars-like conditions in an attempt of providing some idea of how that survival would look like.

However, volunteers will not be sent to outer space but space-like conditions will be created on Earth to understand the challenges and requirements of human survival on Mars. For this, a dune will be created.  

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The volunteers will live in the Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed 1,700-square-foot module inside the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The model will include private rooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, a workout room, and space to grow crops.

The application for the volunteers, which opened on Friday, is looking for permanent US citizens aged 30-55 and have no underlying health or dietary issues.

The application is open till September 13.

For now, NASA is planning to conduct three such experiments. The first experiment will begin in the fall of 2022, then in 2024 and 2025.

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The volunteers will be paid for the stay and will be given tasks such as simulated spacewalks, use of virtual reality and scientific research to collect data for the original mission.

While the paid stay at the artificial March may sound fun activity to many, it will come with its own challenges such as equipment failure and limited communication with the outside world. 

The added challenges will hopefully give NASA possible answers to any issues that arise in future missions.

The selection will “follow standard NASA criteria for astronaut candidate applicants” as applicants should have a master’s degree in a STEM field, professional STEM experience and pilot experience, according to the application