(music)
(mild applause)
(Carolyn Newton:) We're trying to do the
"Women, We Can Do it" pose.
(laughter)
(Newton:) We've been practicing.
(laughter)
(Pablo de Leon:) NASA is now doing a very large human
space flight-related project which is called
"Journey to Mars"
and will end in about 17 years with the first human landing on the red planet.
What we're doing is part of this NASA program,
which is to perform simulations of increasing duration
in our inflatable habitat.
And this time, it was just 10 days, because what we did was to simulate the time that the crew
spends from the moment that they landed on Mars,
until the time that they are ready to put on a space suit
and start doing research outside.
(de Leon voice on computer:) You can increase the temperature as much as you want.
(Brittany Zimmerman:) We were a little bit cold during our nap, but other than that,
I think we've been fine.
(Zimmerman in interview:) I thought that I could handle
really hot temperatures until our habitat
got up to 32.5 degrees Celsius--and we don't have air conditioning.
So I always thought that coming from, living in southern California, and liking a really warm environment,
but without the air flow, it was stifling.
(Poonam Josan:) The department here, they put us in contact with several
teachers in different schools across North Dakota,
so they called on Skype a couple of times a day,
and we got to interact with kids, and it was really fun,
and it was really something we looked forward to doing after starting our day.
(Zimmerman:) Is there anything else you guys would like to know before closing?
(Josan:) We hope we have inspired these kids to go into science, technology or math,
so that was really a good experience.
(Newton:) The good thing about going into the habitat
is coming out with a lot of ideas for future
research projects to do.
So it was a great experience.
(Interviewer:) Would you do it again?
(Newton:) Yes! I would do it, and I would do it for longer if I had to.
Ten days? I could do double that, triple that.
(de Leon:) This mission was a success. The crew members were able to complete all the experiments
and all the tasks.
They also got along very, very well
between the three of them.
So I'll say that this is total success.
And I think that this research
that we are doing here at UND is very important.
We are one of the few universities in the United States
that are conducting this kind of research,
and now, I'm under a new NASA grant that is three years in duration, to increase our capabilities
in the inflatable habitat with the four additional modules.
So I think that's very, very important for us
and places us in a special place compared with other universities.
