Mars Desert Research Station

The MDRS in the San Rafael Swell of Utah, USA (Image credit: McKay Salisbury).

The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is a Mars analog research facility owned and operated by The Mars Society in the high desert of southern Utah, USA. It is the second of the Society's analog stations — following the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic — and one of the longest-running Mars surface-simulation facilities in the world.

At MDRS, rotating crews live and work under many of the constraints expected of an early Mars settlement: a closed habitat, limited water and power, delayed communications, and simulated "spacesuit" excursions onto the surrounding terrain. While in simulation they carry out research in geology, biology, engineering, and human factors.

Location

MDRS sits on the San Rafael Swell, about 11.6 km (7.2 mi) by road northwest of Hanksville, Utah (approximately 38.41°N, 110.79°W). The area's dry climate, sparse vegetation, and eroded sedimentary rock make it a visual and geological stand-in for parts of the Martian surface.

History

The main habitat was built on Earth in 2001, and the station has run field seasons almost every year since. Its facilities have been expanded and rebuilt over time: the original greenhouse was destroyed by fire in December 2014 and replaced in 2015, and the Repair and Assembly Module became fully operational in November 2018.

Facilities

The MDRS campus is a small "settlement" of modules, most joined by short pressurized-style tunnels:

• The Hab — the main habitat, a two-story cylindrical building roughly 8 m (26 ft) in diameter that houses a crew of up to seven. It contains crew quarters, a galley, a laboratory, and the airlocks used for simulated surface excursions.
• GreenHab — a climate-controlled greenhouse for growing food crops and studying bioregenerative life support.
• Science Dome — a laboratory building for the crew's scientific work, which also houses much of the station's power and control systems.
• RAM (Repair and Assembly Module) — an engineering workshop for building, testing, and repairing equipment.
• Musk Mars Desert Observatory — an optical observatory (a 28 cm Schmidt–Cassegrain telescope), funded by a US$100,000 donation from Elon Musk.
• Robotic Observatory — a separate, remotely operated observatory.

Field seasons and crews

MDRS runs an eight-month field season, roughly October through May, timed to avoid the extreme summer heat of the Utah desert. Crews — typically six or seven scientists, engineers, and students — rotate through the station on missions of about two weeks, living "in simulation": wearing analog spacesuits for all outdoor activity (EVAs), rationing resources, and following mission-control protocols. By 2025 more than 300 crews had completed rotations at MDRS, drawing volunteers and university teams from around the world.

Research

Work at MDRS spans field geology, the search for and study of desert extremophiles, greenhouse and life-support experiments, robotics and engineering tests, and human-factors research on how small crews live and work together in isolation and confinement — all directly relevant to planning future human missions to Mars.

See also

• The Mars Society
• Mars-500

External links

• MDRS homepage
• MDRS crew mission reports