A mission to ‘Mars’ at the HI-SEAS habitat: Live updates – Space.com

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It's official, I'm on my way to Mars! This morning at approximately 8:30 a.m. PST, I touched down in San Francisco, halfway to the Big Island of Hawaii where the HI-SEAS habitat is located on the slopes of Mauna Loa.

A few of my Mars crewmembers will join me for the flight and, in just a few short hours we will arrive at Kona and quickly begin the drive to the habitat. We will be traveling directly from the airport to "Mars" to eliminate any excess risk of contamination from the novel coronavirus -- it is certainly strange leaving Earth for Mars during a pandemic, the day before a major Presidential election.

It's finally happening, I'm going to Mars! Well, not really, but I will joining a simulated Mars mission at the HI-SEAS habitat in Hawaii in November alongside astrobiologist and crew commander Michaela Musilova (who is also director of HI-SEAS), Air Force airman and chief engineering officer Amanda Knutson, veterinarian and chief medical officer Brandy Nunez, science writer and crew science communication officer Beth Mund and artist and crew vice commander Richelle Gribble.

The mission will be part of the Sensoria program, which aims to support underrepresented groups within the space sector.

"All of our missions will be female-led and female-majority. We, of course, will welcome with open arms our male colleagues, but we believe that women need to be placed at the center of our shared vision for space exploration, that women need to be given a platform for professional development, opportunities for research and training," bioengineer and Sensoria co-founder J.J. Hastings, who serves as the CEO of Analogs LLC, a company that backs the Sensoria program, told Space.com in January.

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A mission to 'Mars' at the HI-SEAS habitat: Live updates - Space.com