To test the capabilities of the spacesuit prototype, the MS1 Mars, scientists and explorers went inside a volcano, and then went out to “some remote stretches of Iceland”, which is one of the most Mars-like environments to be found here on Earth.
Led by the Iceland Space Agency (ISA), the team traveled into the Grímsvötn volcano and across the Vatnajökull ice cap to test the MS1 Mars analog suit. The suit, designed by Michael Lye, a senior critic and NASA coordinator at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), serves as a tool to test human capabilities on Mars. The suit is "not actually intended for use on Mars, but it's intended for use here on Earth where people are doing analog studies to see what it's like if you were to put people on the surface of Mars," Lye told Space.com.
"The idea is that anything you would do while exploring Mars ... any activity, whether it's science, or traveling or moving about, would be possible in this suit," he added. All seven members of the team got a chance to hop into the suit and test it out when they trekked out onto the frozen landscape for the mission, which lasted from July 26 to Aug. 5.
More details over at the site.
(Image Credit: Dave Hodge/ Unexplored Media)