According to a recent BBC news article, NASA is doing a Mars simulation project to see if six live human beings can survive being isolated in a dome together. From a MoBE perspective, it would be cool to study this system. It’s completely closed to outside microbes – the people living in this dome have to wear space suits whenever they leave. I can’t even imagine how that changes the human microbiome and the indoor air quality, but it’s probably interesting. At the same time, living in this closed environment also means nothing in the dome will contaminate the outside, which is a common theme on microBEnet and concern of space scientists. Regardless, it’s still really cool to imagine humans on Mars.
When this was first announced I wrote to some of the supposed organizers suggesting microbiome sampling of the people and the facility. Not sure if they are doing it or not …
It would be really awesome if they did. I think it would be cool to see what the community looks like.
That sounds very similar to the BioSphere2 experiment in Arizona in the 1990s. That experiment failed, partly because of the unexpected carbon dioxide production by soil microbes. I hope this time they will include microbial life and respiration in the calculations!
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/casestudies/biosphere2.mhtml