Hopeful Mars colonists plan project on Nunavut’s Devon Island

The Flashline Mars Arctic Station, which flies the blue, red and yellow flag of Mars, stands at the edge of the Haughton Crater on Nunavut’s Devon Island. (HANDOUT PHOTO)

The team of wannabe Mars colonists who stayed in the Flashline Mars Arctic Station in 2007 pose in their spacesuits during a simulated outside trek. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MARS SOCIETY)

After four years with no human beings inhabiting the Flashline Mars Arctic Station on Nunavut’s Devon island, plans are underway to revive the use of the Arctic as a test ground for Mars colonies.

The Mars Society said this past week that it wants to mount a one-year “simulated human Mars exploration mission” at the Haughton Crater, whose stark environment has long been touted as a stand-in for Mars.

“By conducting a Mars surface mission simulation at FMARS [Flashline Mars Arctic Station] of the same duration as is needed for an actual expedition to the Red Planet, the Mars Society will take a major step forward towards learning how humans can most effectively explore the new interplanetary frontier,” said the Mars Society, a non-profit charitable organization, founded and headed by Robert Zubin.

Zubrin, the group’s founder, is the author of “The Case for Mars: the plan to settle the Red Planet and Why We Must.”

“It is only under these conditions,” Zubrin said in a May 20 news release about the mission simulation, “where the crew is trying hard to get real scientific work done, while dealing with bulky equipment, cold, danger, discomfort, as well as isolation, that the real stresses of a human Mars mission can be encountered, and the methods for dealing with them mastered.

“Only by doing these missions can we make ourselves ready to go to Mars. Nothing like this has ever been done before. It needs to be done, and we intend to do it.”

Zubrin’s position is manned expeditions to Mars are possible and desirable.

His message: that mankind thrives on adversity and that the exploration of Mars will start a new, positive era of human development.

“We did not get thrown out the Garden of Eden because we ate from the Tree of Knowledge,” Zubrin has said. “We ate from the Tree of Knowledge because we left the garden.”

The Mars Society said it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic http://www.eu-interact.org to use the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, which will require “wintering at the station through six months of deep sub-zero temperatures.”

Costs of the “MA365 program” are estimated at $130,000 for Phase 1 — the refit of the station — and $1 million for Phase 2, the one-year simulated Mars mission itself.

The Mars Society is now raising money for their plans.

“The Mars Society has already received a $30,000 cash pledge, as well as the free loan of the services of two Arctic-capable aircraft and their expert pilots, worth (at least) $50,000 to support the mission,” Zubrin said.

“We still need, however, another $50,000 if we are to complete Phase 1 this summer, which has to happen in order to initiate Phase 2 in 2014. Therefore I am calling on everyone who wishes to see human explorers on Mars in our time to contribute whatever you can now to make this bold plan a reality.”

This summer the plan is to better insulate the station, build an equipment storage shed and add two new generators, a thermal heating system, four all-terrain vehicles, four snowmobiles, a weather station, a ham radio station backup communication system, a small electric range and an upgraded lab.

If you give $5,000 or more, you can also give names to some of the purchases — such as a snowmobile or ATV.

Erected in 2000, after several mishaps, the station has been inhabited before.

In 2005, major problems encountered by the station dwellers included the weather (bad), mud (sticky), spaghetti (too much) and the lack of email.

After 2009, due to conflicts between Zubrin and scientists in the Haughton-Mars “Mars on Earth” Project, who test out space-age science, such as a robotic drill, at the same site, no one has been back to the Flashline station.

In 2007, Pascal Lee, the principal investigator of Haughton-Mars Project, described the science done at the Flashline station as “high school” level, and questioned whether their findings will be of much value to astronauts.

The group then staying there said a big part of their mission was to study themselves, and how well they cope with living in Flashline together, following many Mars-like restrictions, such as no phone calls home, no surfing the web, and waiting 20 minutes before responding to any email, to replicate the time lag of transmitting data from Mars to Earth.