The Mars Society is a nonprofit organization that advocates for human exploration and colonization of Mars. It was founded by Robert Zubrin in 1998 and its principles are based on Zubrin's Mars Direct philosophy, which aims to make human missions to Mars as feasible as possible. The Mars Society generates interest in the Mars program by garnering support from the public and through lobbying. Many current and former Mars Society members are influential in the wider spaceflight community, such as Buzz Aldrin and Elon Musk.
Colonization of Mars is the establishing and maintaining of control over Martian land for exploitation and particularly for the settlement of Mars.
The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) is the first of two simulated Mars habitats located on Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada, which is owned and operated by the Mars Society. The station is a member of the European Union-INTERACT circumarctic network of currently 89 terrestrial field bases located in northern Europe, Russia, US, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scotland as well as stations in northern alpine areas.
Mission: Space is a space exploration-themed pavilion and attached centrifugal motion simulator attraction located in the World Discovery section of Epcot at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. The attraction simulates what an astronaut might experience aboard a spacecraft on a mission to Mars, from the higher g-force of liftoff, to the speculative hypersleep. The pavilion also includes the Mission Space: Cargo Bay gift shop, the Advanced Training Lab interactive play area and Space 220 Restaurant.
NASA's Desert Research and Technology Studies is a group of teams which perform an annual series of field trials seeking to demonstrate and test candidate technologies and systems for human exploration of the surface of the Moon, Mars, or other rocky bodies.
The idea of sending humans to Mars has been the subject of aerospace engineering and scientific studies since the late 1940s as part of the broader exploration of Mars. Long-term proposals have included sending settlers and terraforming the planet. Currently, only robotic landers and rovers have been on Mars. The farthest humans have been beyond Earth is the Moon, under the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA's) Apollo program which ended in 1972.
Space architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space. This mission statement for space architecture was developed at the World Space Congress in Houston in 2002 by members of the Technical Aerospace Architecture Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The architectural approach to spacecraft design addresses the total built environment. It is mainly based on the field of engineering, but also involves diverse disciplines such as physiology, psychology, and sociology.
Human outposts are artificially-created, controlled human habitats located in environments inhospitable for humans, such as on the ocean floor, in the Antarctic, in outer space, or on another planet, as in the challenges to live on Mars.
Human analog missions are activities undertaken on Earth in various environments to simulate aspects of human missions to other worlds, including the Moon, asteroids, and Mars. These remote field tests are performed in locations that are identified based on their physical similarities to the extreme space environments of a target mission. Such activities are undertaken to test hardware and operational concepts in relevant environments.
Astronaut training describes the complex process of preparing astronauts in regions around the world for their space missions before, during and after the flight, which includes medical tests, physical training, extra-vehicular activity (EVA) training, wilderness survival training, water survival training, robotics training, procedure training, rehabilitation process, as well as training on experiments they will accomplish during their stay in space.
Terrestrial analogue sites are places on Earth with assumed past or present geological, environmental or biological conditions of a celestial body such as the Moon or Mars. Analogue sites are used in the frame of space exploration to either study geological or biological processes observed on other planets, or to prepare astronauts for surface extra-vehicular activity.
Yajaira Sierra-Sastre is a Puerto Rican materials scientist, educator, and aspiring astronaut. She was part of a six-person crew, and the only Hispanic, selected to participate in a four-month-long, Mars analog mission funded by NASA. Sierra-Sastre aspires to become the first Puerto Rican woman to travel to outer space.
The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) is an analog habitat for human spaceflight to Mars currently operated by the International MoonBase Alliance. HI-SEAS is located in an isolated position on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii. The area has Mars-like features and an elevation of approximately 8,200 feet (2,500 m) above sea level. The first HI-SEAS study was in 2013 and NASA's Human Research Program continues to fund and sponsor follow-up studies. The missions are of extended duration from four months to a year. Its missions place HI-SEAS in the company of a small group of analogs that are capable of operating very long duration missions in isolated and confined environments, such as Mars500, Concordia, and the International Space Station.
A Mars analog habitat is one of several historical, existing or proposed research stations designed to simulate the physical and psychological environment of a Martian exploration mission. These habitats are used to study the equipment and techniques that will be used to analyze the surface of Mars during a future crewed mission, and the simulated isolation of the volunteer inhabitants allows scientists to study the medical and psychosocial effects of long-term space missions. They are often constructed in support of extensive Mars analogs. However, sometimes existing natural places are also valued as Mars analogs. Crewed Mars habitats are featured in most human Mars missions; an alternative may be terraforming or telepresence.
A Mars habitat is a hypothetical place where humans could live on Mars. Mars habitats would have to contend with surface conditions that include almost no oxygen in the air, extreme cold, low pressure, and high radiation. Alternatively, the habitat might be placed underground, which helps solve some problems but creates new difficulties.
A Mars suit or Mars space suit is a space suit for EVAs on the planet Mars. Compared to a suit designed for space-walking in the near vacuum of low Earth orbit, Mars suits have a greater focus on actual walking and a need for abrasion resistance. Mars' surface gravity is 37.8% of Earth's, approximately 2.3 times that of the Moon, so weight is a significant concern, but there are fewer thermal demands compared to open space. At the surface the suits would contend with the atmosphere of Mars, which has a pressure of about 0.6 to 1 kilopascal. On the surface, radiation exposure is a concern, especially solar flare events, which can dramatically increase the amount of radiation over a short time.
D-MARS is a human analog mission to the planet Mars, taking place in Makhtesh Ramon in the Negev desert in Israel. D-MARS is an acronym for "Desert Mars Analog Ramon Station" and its crew are known as "ramonauts". Ramon's geological features and aridity are similar to those of Mars. The mission site is a valley that resembles the impact craters of Mars.
Asclepios is a program of space analogue missions designed by students for students, under the mentorship of trained professionals. It seeks to simulate short-term space missions on another celestial body, such as the Moon or Mars, thus paving the way to the future space exploration of the solar system.
The Space Analog for the Moon & Mars (SAM) is a hermetically sealed and pressurized terrestrial analog site. This hi-fidelity research vessel is located at the University of Arizona Biosphere 2 research campus at the base of Santa Catalina Mountains near Oracle, Arizona, USA. Following two and a half years in construction led by Director of Research and principal designer Kai Staats, in April 2023 SAM joined the list of over a dozen active analog stations that enable human analog missions, field tests to “validate architecture concepts, demonstrate technologies” and “test robotics, vehicles, habitats, communication systems, in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and human performance as it relates to human space exploration”. Supported by an international team of specialists with the University of Arizona, NASA, the National Geographic Society, and commercial partners, the core foci of SAM are scientific research objectives related to human space exploration, long-duration other-world habitation, and sustainability of Earth systems and human quality of life. In 2025, SAM will participate in The World's Biggest Analog (WBA), “an international collaboration of researchers, scientists, educators and entrepreneurs working to unite the world’s analogs through a unique and historical mission”.
