The air may be breathable and the location is on planet Earth, but for two weeks a multidisciplinary team of Purdue students and alumni will eat, sleep, work and live like they’re on Mars.

For the second consecutive year, a Purdue team will undergo a mission at the Mars Desert Research Station facility in Utah, conducting a number of experiments and living life as though stationed on the fourth planet from the sun.

Cesare Guariniello, crew geologist on last year’s Boilers2Mars team, is team commander this year and an aspiring astronaut. He said improving technical expertise and knowledge is only part of the preparation to travel one day to the red planet.

“It is much more difficult to test oneself in the psychological and social aspects,” said Guariniello, a 2016 School of Aeronautics and Astronautics doctoral program alumnus and current research associate. “Participation in at the Mars Desert Research Station gives the team a chance to get as close as possible to an actual mission in space, with a good amount of realism.”

The six-member team was selected by Purdue MARS (Mars Activities and Research Society) to take part in the simulation mission. The team, called MartianMakers, will take over control of the research station on the evening of Dec. 30 and pass it on to the next team on Jan. 12.

The mission team represents five different areas in the College of Science and College of Engineering, including Guariniello and AAE master's student Alexandra Dukes, who will serve as crew journalist.

Guariniello said the team has a number of experiments and research projects that team members will be working on during the two weeks. Among the work is analysis and mapping of radiation in the station area, crew reaction to stressful situations, the study of germs and contamination of plants/crew in the habitat and analysis of waste produced in the habitat. Some of it is computer-based while others will be executed directly at the habitat, such as bacteria collection and sequencing, and waste analysis.

More: Purdue News Service