We celebrate birthdays, national holidays, and important milestones of the mission. Here, I write about end-of-year celebrations.

On Friday, August 28, 2015, the six crew members of the fourth Hawaiʻi Space Exploration Analog and Simulation or HI-SEAS mission entered the solar-powered dome on the slopes of Mauna Loa where they will be living in isolation for one year.

The crew that will spend 365 days in isolation in the next Hawaiʻi Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission has been selected.

I’m the only member of the current HI-SEAS crew that had spent time in another Mars analog (which is how people in this field refer to these simulated Mars missions) before starting at HI-SEAS.

Martha and I got to spend the day outside, we did science, we sun-tanned, we took a few lovely walks around the neighborhood, and I got to see how it would feel if I suddenly weight 200 lbs.

Hello and welcome to the new RSoFM page, here you’ll be able to find out all about the STEM outreach projects that the HI-SEAS III Crew has been carrying out with help from elementary and middle school students in the Clark County School Dictrict in Nevada.

I completed a model of our habitat that I’ve been working on for a while. I uploaded it to Thingiverse, so people can print their own (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:811113). I’m also printing a bunch to give out for outreach.

While contemplating my move to the dome, I had two competing voices, not unusual for a Gemini, but hey, we all must live with some contradiction!

So we have some pretty cool energy systems here on “Mars”.

The bubble wasn’t crystal clear, there were scratches, smears and minor distortions in the heavy duty plastic but from the inside I couldn’t imagine a more perfect scene.