To Prepare For Mars Settlement, Simulated Missions Explore Utah's Desert
Victoria LaBarre was climbing out of a canyon and into a bright, vast, seemingly lifeless landscape when she started to experience an astronaut's nightmare.
"Suddenly," she said, "I couldn't breathe."
The symptoms were real — maybe from claustrophobia, or from exertion at high altitude. But LaBarre didn't unlatch her helmet to get a breath of fresh air because, in this simulated Mars exercise in the Utah desert, she was supposed to be an astronaut. The canyon was standing in for Candor Chasma, a 5-mile-deep gash in the Red Planet's surface. On Mars, there's no oxygen in the air — you do not take off your helmet.
So, instead, LaBarre radioed for help from fellow members of . The team of students and teachers from a Texas community college had applied together to live and work for a week this spring in a two-story metal cylinder at the near Hanksville, Utah.
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