What I Learned From Living on Mars

I joined Crew 286 at the Mars Desert Research Station, where my crew mates conducted experiments that proved out sustainable approaches to vegan food production, and tested concepts for life support systems and sound ergonomics, designed for Mars’s extreme and resource - restricted environment.

The analog astronauts in the crew shared certain traits, such as a life spent working to improve conditions for people on Earth, cooperativeness, helpfulness, and prioritizing meeting challenges over comfort.

I began to observe ways in which the design of the habitat seemed to inspire even more environmentally conscious and prosocial behavior and pushed us as a crew to innovate on water and resource conservation. Working in the Upper Jurassic era geological formations of the desert, while being part of an exercise meant to uncover problems and solutions in preparation for actual Mars settlement, gave me a glimpse of a cognitive shift known as the overview effect; a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space, a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities and increased sense of connection to other people and the Earth.