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Astroland Space Center in Cantabria takes volunteers through the weird sensations and gruelling tasks that a real-live person on Mars would have to face, as well as giving them rigorous emergency-situation training.
Another reality
“Mars is a desolate landscape, and I'm alone in it,” according to The Martian, Andy Weir's début novel which was adapted to screen by Ridley Scott, starring Matt Damon.
But if you're up to finding out what it's like without committing yourself to the rest of your life on a strange planet, Astroland offers a 100-day course where you can find out.
Back in 2019, the centre carried out a stringent selection process to find 100 crew members to take part in 10 missions, with 10 people in each, and they are still running the training for anyone who has changed their mind and would like to give it a go.
It costs €10,000 and comes in three phases – the first of which is the easiest, involving distance learning, physical and advanced psychological preparation and personal development.
Online sessions of up to three hours at a time, and one-to-one follow-up tutorials, start the course, then each 'Astrolander' has to take on some of their own preparation work.
This is carried out independently but with the support and supervision of Astroland staff, and covers personal training, nutrition, exercise, scientific knowledge and psychology techniques.
They are sent scientific reports and then have to carry out field research based upon them, and are expected to follow a tailored diet and exercise programme, with regular self-report on their progress.
Once they have successfully completed stage one, which lasts three months, they spend a week at the Astroland Space Center in Santander's Science and Technology Park, on a potholing course which involves learning to cope in zero gravity and theoretical and practical survival techniques.
This, according to the organisers, makes Armed Forces training feel a bit like a holiday adventure camp – basically, if you found the Girl Guides or the Scouts too harsh, it probably isn't for you, but if you're keen to see how far you can push your personal limits, especially if the idea of a military career attracts you but do not believe in armed conflict, it may just work for you.
Whether or not you decide to take it a step further and join the future Mars colonisation mission is another matter entirely.
Then it starts to get tough
“The Astrolanders arrive in Santander, spend a night and the following morning, then start on the final leg of their training programme,” explains the company.
The third phase sees them move into the Ares Space Station – which is very much on the ground rather than in orbit, but you wouldn't know it – where the hostile conditions and environment on Mars are recreated.
They spend four days and three nights here, or can go for an 'abbreviated experience' of three days and two nights.
Ares Space Station is built inside the cave in Arredondo, Cantabria, which is 1.2 kilometres in length and 50 metres high.
“Any permanent human colony on Mars would need to live in lava tubes to protect themselves from the harsh environment on the planet, which is lethal for our earthling organisms,” explains Astroland.
“They'll effectively be living in an underground station.
“Astrobiologists are hoping to find some kind of life form in these cavities.”
The day-to-day life of a Martian
Not only do you get astronaut suits and oxygen tanks for your Mars adventure, you also have crucial facilities available like laboratories for growing plants in 'impossible conditions', explorer robots, 'living capsules', food adapted to the needs of a human on the wrong planet, and 3D printers.
“Astrolanders are not allowed to leave their cabins without their anti-bacterial, flexible, anti-abrasion space suits – a one-piece overall made from polymer and produced using a 3D printer,” trainers explain.
“It's useful to gauge the reactions of people who are not, currently, trained in space travel, since it will be precisely those people who, in the future, will make up the majority of the population in interplanetary missions,” admit the Astroland staff.
In theory, anyone can give it a go – but volunteers must be physically fit.
Different levels of fitness, types of personality and other qualities are taken into account and carefully evaluated in order to tailor training, mentally as well as bodily, to each person and their individual challenges.
And with plans to send the first humans to Mars on the cards around the year 2030, the Astroland experience is one of the first scientific experiments on earth focusing seriously on preparing members of a future colony on the red planet, but without the risks involved in the 'real thing'.
Photographs by Astroland Space Center
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