Nasa starts year-long experiment to simulate life on Mars

A team of Nasa recruits have started living in a dome in Hawaii to simulate what life in Mars would look like.

The isolation experiment, which will last a year starting on Friday, will be the longest of its type attempted. The Nasa team – composed of a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans - a pilot, an architect, a journalist and a soil scientist - will live in close quarters under the dome, without fresh air, fresh food or privacy.

Any journey outside the dome - which measures only 36ft in diameter and is 20ft tall - will require a spacesuit.

The recruits will each have a small sleeping cot and a desk inside their rooms. Provisions include powdered cheese and canned tuna.

Architect Tristan Bassingthwaighte said he will be "studying architectural methods for creating a more habitable environment and increasing our capability to live in the extreme environments of Earth and other worlds," according to his LinkedIn page.

NASA is spending $1.2 million on such simulations and has recently received funding of another $1 million for three more in the coming years, according to principal investigator Kim Binsted.

"That is very cheap for space research," she told AFP. "It is really inexpensive compared to the cost of a space mission going wrong."

Other similar simulation experiments have taken place under the ocean off the Florida coast, in Antarctica and in Russia, where a 520-day Mars experiment was carried out in 2011.

Isolation experiments focus on the human element of space exploration and the social problems that arise living in tight quarters.

"I think one of the lessons is that you really can't prevent interpersonal conflicts. It is going to happen over these long-duration missions, even with the very best people," Nasa investigator Kim Binsted said.