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Scientist to live in year-long Mars simulation

Stem cell biologist, Kelly Haston, is taking part in NASA’s simulation of life on Mars.

Kelly Haston, a stem cell biologist, is taking part in NASA’s year-long simulation of life on Mars.

The Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission aims to find out how people cope emotionally and physically with a long period of limited contact with the outside world.

Kelly and three other scientists are living in a 1,700 square-foot habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

5 Live Breakfast’s Rick Edwards sent questions to Kelly under the strict delay restrictions of the programme.

He asked Kelly what her diet was like: “The food is actually really amazing, it's very diverse. We eat a lot of shelf-stable space food, because you’re not going to have a lot of plants on Mars.

“However, at some point in the mission we will be getting things to grow, so we will be able to augment that shelf-stable food with some fresh greens.â€

The crew is responsible for maintaining equipment and collecting samples to capture data for the mission, but they also have opportunities for down-time.

“We do have both a workspace and a common area where we're able to congregate and watch shows or play games, so we actually do a lot of that together, although we also all have our own rooms.

“There is some amount of role-playing that we're doing, where we are making sure that we stay true to the mission realism…but we do have this element of isolation and not talking one-to-one with people outside of our crew.â€

This clip is from 5 Live Breakfast.

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