‘This Is Mars on Earth’

NASA doesn’t plan to launch humans to Mars anytime soon, so Pascal Lee decided to drive.

First came miles of seemingly endless ridges of ice and expanses of grayish-yellow rock. Then yawning canyons and, in the distance, the rim of a massive meteor crater. Through the frosted windshield, Lee scanned the terrain for the myriad dangers of this alien landscape: snowdrifts capable of swallowing his Humvee, a precariously thin skin of ice on the frozen ocean and really hungry polar bears.

It’s not quite Mars, but for aficionados of the Red Planet, it’s the next best thing. It’s Canada.

More precisely, it’s Devon Island, the world’s largest uninhabited land mass and a place so desolate even the hardy Inuit forsake it. For Lee, a Mars expert at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., it was love at first sight when he first saw the island’s unearthly landscape in 1997.

“This is Mars on Earth,” Lee said.

Each summer, two teams of explorers and scientists who want to go to Mars settle instead for this frozen patch of real estate south of the North Pole. Here, they mimic, as best they can, the harsh and isolated conditions of a scientific base camp struggling to establish itself on an alien planet.

One camp, a set of small and large tents, rises out of a dusty plateau within sight of the 12 1/2-mile-wide crater that ravaged the center of the island. The second homestead, a two-story, cylindrical metal living module, sits at the crater rim. Cold wind often whips the sites; yellow-brown dust covers visitors and their gear as soon as they arrive. There are no reminders that a civilized world lies to the south. On the horizon are huge rock blocks ejected from the crater 23 million years ago and snow patches that don’t melt even in the heart of summer.

“Mars analogs,” as Devon and places like it are called, have become all the rage among planetary scientists. NASA scientists use extreme locations around the globe -- the volcanoes of Antarctica, Norway’s Svalbard islands and the Mohave Desert -- to test rovers, crawling robots and other technology against the same cold, dry bleakness they expect to find on Mars.

“We want to test things in the harshest possible environment on Earth to see how they behave,” said Scott Anderson, a University of Hawaii geophysicist who braved temperatures of 4 below zero atop the glaciers of Svalbard to work the kinks out of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory “cryoscout” drill that could one day bore into Mars’ northern ice cap.

Here on Devon, about 60 scientists, Mars buffs and local Inuit guides test the merits of spacesuits wired with internal computers and vehicles they can use for multi-night sojourns away from camp. They also test their own ability to forgo bathing, and be surrounded by unbathed colleagues who often turn surly as soap and hot water become memories.

“A geek element is almost required,” said Lee, who heads the project and has turned away hundreds of volunteers hoping to live on “Mars.”

Lee’s camp opened July 4 when two charter planes dropped 11 people -- geologists, biologists, computer experts and the camp cook -- onto the island. Two dozen more will join them for shorter research stints until the camp closes the first week of August, when the weather will once again turn wintry.

This is a high-tech science lab with a hefty dose of macho summer camp. Some crew members spend their days in lab tents culturing bacterial samples or building electronic sensors. Others send remote-controlled airplanes soaring into blue skies or roar off on all-terrain vehicles to explore distant valleys. The rifles slung over their backs are protection against the massive white bears, the only other large mammals on the island.

With no human Mars mission planned by NASA, some see the idea of living on a faux-Mars as slightly half-baked, or at least far, far ahead of its time. They believe a more prudent approach would be to wait for a spaceship that could make the journey, or perhaps some money to pay for it. Then, the testing of remote computer networks, spacesuits and such refinements as environment-friendly toilets or mood-enhancing interior designs might make more sense.

“It’s kind of putting the cart before the horse,” said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, a Pasadena-based group that advocates a human mission to Mars.

But stalwarts of Mars exploration believe the camps on Devon are a necessary first step in laying the groundwork and encouraging NASA to speed plans for sending humans to the Red Planet.

Researchers here are committed to their quest, no matter how many frozen dinners they have to eat, how many barrels of urine they have to haul back to civilization or how much snow collects on their tents as they shiver through frigid Arctic summer nights.

“I was freezing,” admitted University of Calgary geophysicist Robert Stewart, who spent several weeks at the base last summer. “And I’m Canadian.”

Red Planet Stand-In

With its rock-littered plains, meteor crater and networks of braided river systems that stand dry in summer, Devon looks an awful lot like the surface of Mars. When the wind howls and camp members are out on the dry, frozen landscape in spacesuits, it’s not hard to imagine this bleak pocket really is an alien world.

Temperatures range from 50 below in winter to 50 above in summer. The 25,000-square-mile island is more than 100 miles from the nearest Inuit settlement, the hamlet of Resolute Bay. The North Pole is 1,000 miles to the north.

The island’s only permanent inhabitants are two unfortunate sailors buried in permafrost, who died on Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage more than 150 years ago.

Like Mars, the scarred surface of Devon was shaped by massive ice sheets and meteor strikes. The two locales are so similar physically, experts looking at satellite photos often cannot tell them apart.

“As long as no one’s in front of you,” said Jaret Matthews, a recent Purdue University graduate who lived on Devon last summer, “you’re immediately transported to Mars.”

Mars is actually far more wretched.

Dusty winds on the planet gust over 110 mph. Temperatures fall to 200 degrees below zero. Strong solar radiation would fry human DNA. In the planet’s reduced gravity, muscles would waste away. The thin carbon dioxide atmosphere would instantly kill anyone without a life-support system.

Lee can’t wait to go.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in France by a Chinese father and French mother, Lee has yearned to travel to Mars since he was a child avidly following Voyager through the solar system in the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

He studied a traditional science track in France in the late 1980s, then earned a doctorate from Cornell University in New York for work on asteroids. He worked on a NASA mission, the Mars Observer spacecraft, until it was lost in 1993. He found the work interesting but too removed from his dream.

“I swore when I left graduate school I would spend every waking minute trying to get a human mission to Mars,” Lee said.

With the current grounding of all human space flight since the Columbia space shuttle accident and NASA still flinching from the loss of several robotic Mars probes in recent years, high-level discussions of a human Mars mission have all but stopped.

Such a trip would require an estimated $1 trillion and widespread international cooperation. Designing a habitable spacecraft to complete the journey and then return would be among the largest engineering projects in history. Some experts say it could be a century before humans set foot on Mars.

Now nearing 40, Lee is beginning to realize the first footsteps will probably not be his. Still, he wants to do everything he can to pave the way for others.

“If we are ever to go any further, we have to master Mars,” he said.

Lee’s many trips to Devon are a good start. He first visited the island’s crater in 1997 and deemed it Mars-like enough to host a study crew. Last year, he co-founded the nonprofit Mars Institute to raise funds to promote the scientific exploration of Mars. While NASA and the Canadian Space Agency support Lee’s work, the camp on Devon is largely paid for by science grants and donations. Many visitors, including journalists and space enthusiasts, pay $200 a night or more for the privilege of sleeping on the frozen ground.

The second camp on Devon is run by the Mars Society, a nonprofit group formed in 1998 to further the long-range goal of the human colonization of Mars.

Surviving the Summer

For now, mastering Mars means surviving another Devon summer. The accommodations are crude. At Lee’s camp, communal life takes place in a series of large tents that serve as kitchen, meeting hall, dining room and science lab. ATVs, the transport of choice, are usually parked outside. A cluster of small backpacking tents set amid the rocks make up the sleeping quarters. Making life even harder is the fact that everything brought here -- from pork chop bones and Power Bar wrappers to human waste -- must be scrupulously collected and brought back out on bush planes.

This summer, the team will test a new generation of spacesuits that include Borg-like computers inside helmets that beam information onto explorers’ face shields. NASA’s shuttle suits, 300 pounds in Earth weight, are far too heavy. Even on Mars, where the force of gravity is weaker, the suits would feel as though they weighed more than 100 pounds. The current model spacesuits are also useless for walking because they have no leg joints. “It’s not a walking suit, it’s a floating suit,” Lee said.

Other work includes trying to understand how life can take hold with so little encouragement. Devon is littered with surprising niches. A big clump of moss might reveal an Arctic fox underneath -- a valuable source of food in this nutrient-starved environment. Rare patches of lichen feed on age-old seagull droppings.

Devon’s geology has already given the scientists insight into one of the biggest mysteries on Mars. Freshly carved gullies here that look exactly like ones on Mars may prove water once flowed there. A leading theory is that the Martian gullies are the product of snowmelt. Lee suspected that years ago because of his work on Devon.

While the science thrills those who work here, often daily life does not. Sleeping in the constant daylight of the Arctic summer is difficult. Walking across the windy plains to reach the bathroom tent late at night when polar bears are lurking is an expedition in itself. In the cold and wind, simple tasks such as putting up a tent are a challenge. Building permanent housing can be even harder.

The Mars Society suffered a minor disaster in 2000 after a helicopter drop went awry, crushing a construction crane and plywood flooring needed for living quarters, said Robert Zubrin, the society’s president.

The team rigged a rickety scaffold and built got their cylindrical “habitation module,” but not without a hefty dose of ingenuity. A seemingly simple job turned into a weeks-long ordeal that probably would have been fatal had the group been on Mars.

While technology is one aspect of planning for a mission, the focus here is on the weakest, most fragile link of any long mission: the humans.

Zubrin’s group has endured experiments to determine how little water they could use -- and still stomach each other. They found it was half the amount budgeted by NASA if they only took cold sponge baths every other day.

They became guinea pigs for NASA human space flight experts who wanted to see what bedroom posters would keep a Mars crew happiest. The answer: It didn’t matter. If people on Mars are as overworked as those on Devon, they will spend barely any waking hours in their bunks.

“Just doing this tends to rub really obvious things in your face,” said Zubrin, whose group also supports a year-round “hab” in the Utah desert and is planning for another amid the volcanoes of Iceland.

One major concern for long-term missions to Mars is making sure teams get along, stay productive and stay sane. A common theme of sci-fi thrillers set on Mars are crew members who snap.

Devon has seen tension between the groups that camp here. Last summer, the teams were not on speaking terms even though they lived within sight of each other. They often met in awkward silence at the airplane runway when supplies came in. “It was strange, almost tribal,” said one participant.

The schism is a touchy subject for Zubrin and Lee, who once worked together closely and do not discuss the split publicly. While the men have gone their separate ways, they speak politely about each others’ projects.

Much Easier Than Mars

Hard and strange as life seems on Devon, it’s still easy compared to what is likely on Mars -- sometimes disappointingly so.

“It’s too warm. The air’s too thick. There’s surface water. We can breathe,” said Brian Glass, a computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Northern California who has worked summers at Devon since 1998. “If we wanted a real analog, we’d come in winter when it’s 50 or 60 below. And we just might.”

Even determined explorers, however, have their limits. They don’t eat freeze-dried space food but get occasional “freshies,” like salad greens and ripe plums, delivered by plane.

“We had one lettuce salad one night and we all still remember it,” said Alain Berinstain, a chemist at the University of Guelph in charge of the Canadian Space Agency’s Mars plans.

They feel no guilt accepting new DVD movies and top-shelf liquor from visitors who have passed through duty-free shops at Ottawa’s airport. Tins of smoked oysters and packets of dried mangos circulate through the dining hall. And camp residents often walk outside tents to smoke, an unthinkable pleasure on a spacecraft or space colony where every ounce of oxygen is precious.

At one point, scientists bandied about the idea of using plants in the new greenhouse to process urine into drinking water, a process that could be necessary on Mars or other space colonies where fresh water would be a rare commodity.

The allure of Mars is strong. But not that strong.

“No one,” Berinstain sighed, “said they would drink it.”