Becoming a multiplanetary species: Crew completes first mission in habitat at Biosphere 2
By Mikayla Mace Kelley, University of Arizona Communications
May 5, 2023
On April 27, a four-person crew sealed themselves in an air-tight, pressurized habitat on the grounds of the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, where eight people conducted a similar experiment more than 30 years earlier.
The Space Analog for the Moon and Mars, or SAM, habitat was created to allow people to experience what it might be like to live on the surface of another celestial body.
On May 2, six days after the first crew members entered the habitat, a crowd gathered to watch them emerge. As valves were released to decompress the habitat, it began to hiss, and a hush fell over the crowd. Minutes later, the pressure inside the habitat matched the outdoors, prompting Linda Leigh – one of the original eight people to live in Biosphere 2 for two years – to turn a red lever and swing open the habitat’s airlock hatch.
