Want to spend a year living in NASA's Mars simulation?

Summary

Short Wave Podcast Summary

Episode: Want to spend a year living in NASA’s Mars simulation?
Date: July 31, 2026
Hosts: Regina Barber (NPR), Scott Detrow (NPR), Ari Daniel (NPR Science Correspondent)

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Overview

This “Spacing Out” edition of NPR’s Short Wave is a spirited, thoughtful conversation exploring the science, logistics, and psychology of NASA's simulated year-long Mars mission, recent research on sugar molecules found in deep space, and an update on the New Horizons spacecraft at the edge of the solar system. The co-hosts blend curiosity, humor, and existential wonder as they highlight how space research connects to fundamental questions about isolation, the origins of life, and our place in the universe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. NASA’s Year-Long Mars Simulation

• What’s happening:
  NASA is recruiting volunteers for a simulated one-year mission to the moon and Mars at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
• Purpose:
  To test human resilience, the effects of long-term isolation, team dynamics, and delayed communications — all key factors for real Mars missions.
• Simulation Details:
  • Four participants live in a 650 sq. ft. enclosure simulating deep space travel, moving for two months to a larger habitat mimicking Mars surface living. (04:03–04:38)
  • Structure includes sleeping, recreation, work, medical and food areas, an airlock, and crop-growing space.
  • Still under Earth's gravity.
• Unique Challenges:
  • No real-time contact with mission control or loved ones – up to 20-minute communication delays, simulating Mars conditions. (05:14)
  • Psychological stresses of isolation and artificial constraints.
• Who Can Apply:
  • Adults 30–55 (other ages considered), strong science background, must pass physical and psychological tests, be resilient team players. (06:12)
  • Applications: ongoing. (06:35)

Quote:

“I think it would get old quickly… I’m not… I don’t think I would be a team person after a week.”
– Regina Barber (02:09)

Memorable Exchange:

“Would either of you do this simulation? Like a year-long simulation?”
– Regina Barber (00:58)
“I think I would hold out for actually going to Mars if I was going to.”
– Scott Detrow (01:15)

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2. Sugar Molecules Discovered in Interstellar Space

• The Mystery:
  Scientists are searching for how life’s building blocks arrived on Earth, focusing on the interstellar medium — the matter between stars containing dust, ices, and organic molecules. (07:07–07:29)
• Discovery:
  • Spanish researchers detected the 4-carbon sugar “erythrulose” in the galactic center’s interstellar medium using radio telescopes. (07:45)
  • This sugar is rare (found in raspberries), but its presence in space hints at universal prebiotic chemistry.
• Significance:
  • Suggests key biomolecules, like sugars for RNA/proteins, can form in space before stars or planets exist.
  • These could then hitchhike to planets via asteroids — possibly seeding the chemistry for life on Earth and elsewhere. (08:36–09:11)
• Expert Perspective:
  • Adds to mounting evidence that ingredients for life are widespread, not unique to Earth.

Quote:

“Your heart starts beating super fast, you get super excited… Very nice feeling.”
– Itaskun Jimenez Serra (Astrophysicist), via Ari Daniel (08:25)
“So it’s my guess that if we were to find life elsewhere, it’s going to be using the same kind of chemistry. There’s no reason to think that life is going to be based on something else.”
– Angel Mojarro, NASA (09:25)

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3. New Horizons: Awake at the Edge of the Solar System

• The Update:
  NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, launched for Pluto, is now over 6 billion miles from Earth in the Kuiper Belt after nearly a year in hibernation. (09:39–10:08)
• Current Mission:
  • Exploring the solar system’s boundary — the “heliosphere,” a bubble shielded from interstellar radiation by the sun.
  • Searching for clues about how this region works and where the solar system “ends.” (10:19–11:01)
• Technical Marvel:
  • Communicates via NASA’s Deep Space Network — three giant radio dishes on Earth (California, Spain, Australia), with the largest being 70 meters (football-field sized). (11:13–11:29)
  • Mission managed by Alice Bowman, who expresses deep excitement about advancing human knowledge and ingenuity.
• Broader Context:
  • Supplements discoveries made by the Voyager spacecraft but with new data and methods.

Quote:

“It’s a testament to human ingenuity, our ingenuity. We thought it up.”
– Regina Barber (11:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Regina’s existential humor on team missions:

  “Even being with [family] for a few days and not leaving the house turned me into a monster. So, I am not the person to recruit for these missions.” (01:50)

• Ari Daniel’s comic segue:

  “Does sugar help, Gina? Because I’m bringing you and Scott a story about sugar molecules found in space. How about that for a segue?” (02:15)

• Science, wonder, and playful banter on space communication:

  Scott: “What is the spacecraft doing?” (10:13)
  Ari: “It’s studying the edges of our solar system.” (10:16)

• Goof on cats joining NASA:

  Ari: “The cat’s typing an application to be in a simulated Mars mission for a year.” (12:06)
  Regina: “Send cats to Mars.” (12:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:47 – Meet the hosts; Mars mission simulation discussion begins
• 04:03 – Details of NASA’s year-long simulation
• 05:14 – Mars-like communication delays and psychological tests
• 06:12 – NASA’s target candidate profile
• 06:44 – Sugar molecules in space: context and discovery
• 08:25 – Researchers’ excitement over finding sugar in the interstellar medium
• 09:39 – New Horizons spacecraft mission update
• 11:13 – Deep Space Network science and communications
• 12:06 – Humorous close: will cats make better Mars mission candidates?

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Tone & Language

• Approachable, witty, and “science for everyone”:
  The hosts use accessible language, sprinkle humor through existential musings and puns, and maintain a friendly, lively atmosphere even when discussing heady science.

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Summary Takeaway

This fast-paced, fun Short Wave episode reveals how simulated missions, cosmic chemistry, and boundary-pushing space probes expand our understanding of life’s origins and the challenges and marvels of venturing into the unknown. The conversations underscore not only scientific progress but also our shared human curiosity and creativity in exploring the universe.

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Share this episode with a space-loving friend—or a cat who dreams of Mars.

Transcript

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

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[Regina Barber]

You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. Hey, short waivers. Regina Barber here. And you know what time it is? It's time for us to talk space news for a whole episode. It's Spacing out with Gina. Here today is my co host, my fellow co creator and space cadet from All Things Considered, Scott Detrow.

[Scott Detrow]

So excited to be back. Favorite time of the month. Let's space out.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. And joining us, Scott is a newcomer, NPR science correspondent, Ari Daniel. Welcome, Ari.

[Ari Daniel]

Thank you.

[Regina Barber]

And to start, did you know that in space no one can hear you scream?

[Ari Daniel]

But here on Earth in the room next door, my cat can.

[Scott Detrow]

Ari, welcome to Spacing Out.

[Ari Daniel]

Oh, I'm so glad to be here.

[Regina Barber]

It's gonna be great, I promise, Ari. Okay, we're gonna talk about NASA's recruitment of volunteers to simulate a year long mission to the moon and then Mars. I have a question for both of you though. Would either of you do this simulation? Like a year long simulation?

[Scott Detrow]

I think I would hold out for actually going to Mars if I was going to.

[Regina Barber]

Would you really want to go? Oh my gosh, not me.

[Scott Detrow]

I mean, I would be more interested in that than pretending to go to in Texas Fair.

[Regina Barber]

What about you, Ari? Would you simulate going to the moon, then Mars?

[Ari Daniel]

I don't think you could get me to do it either. I just feel like to clear the calendar for that long of a time to go to Houston, you know, I mean, I'd be happy to go to Houston for like a weekend, but.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

Right.

[Regina Barber]

Not a year though.

[Ari Daniel]

A year in a room in an enclosure might be a hard sell, so.

[Regina Barber]

I would miss my family too much. And honestly, like even being with them for a few days and like not going to work and not leaving the house turned me into a monster. So I am not the person to recruit for these missions.

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah, I guess I will say there's blips of time where I'm like, this would seem appealing to just kind of hide for a year, but yeah, I think it would get old quickly.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, I'm not. I don't think I would be a team person after a week.

[Ari Daniel]

Well, does sugar help, Gina? Because I'm bringing you and Scott a story about sugar molecules found in space. How about that for a segue?

[Regina Barber]

You did amazing, Ari. I loved it. I appreciate it. Okay. And we'll end this spacing out party with a story about a spacecraft that just woke up on the edge of our solar system.

[Ari Daniel]

Rise and shine.

[Regina Barber]

So today on the show we got isolation, sugar and the edge of our solar system. This is real heady stuff.

[Scott Detrow]

This is existential.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from npr.

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[Regina Barber]

D I.com okay, Scott, Ari, should we start with human isolation?

[Scott Detrow]

I mean no bigger question. But what I'm wondering is if these astronauts are not actually astronauts because they're not going to Mars, what exactly is it that NASA is focusing on here?

[Ari Daniel]

Well, right now people can apply to join a year long four person simulated mission to the moon and Mars. It'll take place at the Johnson Space center in Houston and could start as soon as August of next year.

[Scott Detrow]

These people are of course not actually going to the moon or Mars though. So what is it that they're doing when they don't leave Houston?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, so they spend most of their time isolated in a 650ish square foot enclosure. And they're simulating travel through deep space. And for two months in the middle, they'll move to a different, slightly bigger structure to simulate surface living on Mars.

[Ari Daniel]

And this structure will have areas for sleeping, recreation, work, medical and food areas, plus an airlock and a place to grow crops. They'll do science experiments and test out protocols for living and working in deep space. But there's one big difference from actually being in space. They'll still be living under Earth's gravity.

[Scott Detrow]

And that's one of the things that scientists wonder about long term long distance space travel is how being in zero gravity or low gravity that long affects your body. Since that can't be tested out, what exactly is it that NASA is hoping to learn here?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, so one of the big objectives is to understand how the crew deals with stress and isolation. Will they all get along? And how will they handle such long term separation from their loved ones? One thing they'll test is how the crew deals with communication delays. Because depending on where Mars is in the orbit, it could take a, hello, 20 minutes to get to Earth and 20 minutes to hear back. Which also means no instant communication with mission control.

[Ari Daniel]

In current and past real life missions, astronauts have been able to talk to loved ones or mission control in real time. But a Mars mission could last two to three years. So they'll be dealing with these communication delays for a while.

[Scott Detrow]

I think it's fair to say it takes a special kind of person to volunteer for a not real space mission for a year. And I'm just imagining the conversations with your spouse or kids like, hey, I'm going to Mars. And by Mars I mean this fake

[Ari Daniel]

Mars, I mean Houston room.

[Scott Detrow]

So I mean, but like, but that being said, the science is like important. So I'm curious, what kind of people is NASA looking for?

[Regina Barber]

So the application asks for people 30 to 55. So we could go though they said that they'll consider other ages who can pass their physical and psychological tests. They want people with science backgrounds and astronaut like qualities. So resilient people who can work independently and with a team.

[Scott Detrow]

When, if somebody's been interested by our conversation about this, when are applications due?

[Ari Daniel]

NASA's website says the deadline is ongoing.

[Scott Detrow]

Okay, second topic which was intriguing. Sugar in space. What's going on here?

[Regina Barber]

So researchers have long wondered how life on Earth started. Like where did the ingredients come from and how did they get here?

[Scott Detrow]

Big questions.

[Ari Daniel]

Some of the biggest. Some scientists have been trying to answer it by scanning our galaxy for the building blocks of life and their precursors. One particularly good place to look is something called the interstellar medium, which is basically the space in between the stars.

[Scott Detrow]

So this might be a dumb question.

[MIDI Health Announcer]

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[Scott Detrow]

But are there things in that space or. I thought it was just a vacuum.

[Regina Barber]

Space, right?

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah, I thought space.

[Regina Barber]

So in certain areas there is. So my first research project was on the interstellar medium. Shout out to Kristin Larson, my advisor. It basically consists of all kinds of compounds in the form of dust particles and ices.

[Scott Detrow]

Okay.

[Ari Daniel]

It turns out that this interstellar medium, Scott, is an amazing chemical factory that can produce a range of organic molecules, including ones needed to fashion RNA proteins and cell membranes.

[Scott Detrow]

And I assume a kind of sugar, perhaps.

[Ari Daniel]

That's right. A team of scientists pointed two telescopes in Spain at the interstellar medium. That rich chemical brew in the center of our milky way galaxy, and they scanned it for radio signals of different molecules, which is how they found A4 carbon sugar, erythrulose.

[Regina Barber]

I've heard of, like, glucose and fructose, but, like, how do you say that?

[Ari Daniel]

Erythrolose?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, I don't.

[Scott Detrow]

That feels like an odyssey character.

[Ari Daniel]

Yeah, it's not that common, but it's found in raspberries. Itaskun Jimenez Serra, an astrophysicist at the center for astrobiology in Spain, says the discovery, which was published in Nature astronomy, was thrilling.

[Regina Barber]

Your heart starts beating super fast, like, you get super excited. Very nice feeling.

[Scott Detrow]

Why exactly is she so excited, though? Why. Why is this such a big deal?

[Ari Daniel]

Well, living things make and use sugars, but we don't know how they come about without life around. These results suggest that sugars May have been made Inside a molecular cloud before stars or planets formed. They could then be incorporated into, say, an asteroid as it's being built from the material in the interstellar medium. And then such a space rock could have struck the early earth, Perhaps delivering a subset of key ingredients, Sweetening the st for the emergence of life here.

[Regina Barber]

I saw what he did there.

[Scott Detrow]

And maybe elsewhere.

[Ari Daniel]

Yep, exactly. Scott. I spoke with angel mojaro, an organic geochemist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight center who wasn't involved in the research, and he says this discovery adds to evidence that these ingredients May have given rise to life not just on earth.

[Scott Detrow]

So it's my guess that if we were to find life elsewhere, it's going to be using the same kind of chemistry. There's no reason to think that life is going to be based on something else. So let's talk about a spacecraft on an ongoing journey from here to elsewhere. This the spacecraft on the edge of our solar system?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. So this is the NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. It's famous for taking those first detailed images Of Pluto's surface.

[Scott Detrow]

Right, that. That. That heart on Pluto. Those pictures were so vivid.

[Regina Barber]

They were so beautiful, Scott. So since then, New horizons has continued to travel towards the edges of our solar system.

[Ari Daniel]

Then last year, it went into about 11 months of hibernation. It does this periodically to save energy, and now it's woken up about 6 billion miles away from us and counting.

[Scott Detrow]

Not unlike Ryan gosling and project hail

[Regina Barber]

mary, he was even further.

[Scott Detrow]

What. What is the spacecraft doing?

[Ari Daniel]

It's studying the edges of our solar system.

[Regina Barber]

So it's in the kuiper belt right now, and this is the region where Pluto lives. There's a lot of other icy Objects. The end of this belt is basically the end of our solar system. So our Sol system is in this bubble that the sun makes called the heliosphere. And that heliosphere protects the solar system from high energy radiation coming from other parts of the galaxy.

[Ari Daniel]

Both of the Voyager spacecrafts have traveled out of the solar system, and they studied the edge of that bubble along the way. But scientists still don't know too much about this sphere of protection that the sun creates. And as New Horizons sails through the limits of our solar system, it might be able to gather more clues on how that bubble works or even what it is.

[Scott Detrow]

We talked earlier about how it can take 20 minutes for a message to go back between Earth and Mars. This is Something that is 6 billion miles away. How does this spacecraft communicate with Earth?

[Ari Daniel]

Scientists can talk to spacecraft this far out because of NASA's Deep Space Network. It's this array, Scott, of three radio dishes on Earth, one in California, one in Spain, one in Australia. And these things are giant.

[Regina Barber]

The 70 meter antenna would. If you put it in the football stadium, it would take up the whole space. Yeah, it's huge. So that's Alice Bowman, a spacecraft engineer and the mission operations manager for New Horizons. And she was just so excited to be part of this New Horizons mission, which is truly a testament to human

[Scott Detrow]

ingenuity, much like this recurring.

[Regina Barber]

It's true. It's a testament to human ingenuity, our ingenuity. We thought it up. So, Scott, Ari, thank you for Spacing out with me. Ari, was it okay?

[Ari Daniel]

It was great. The cat didn't even notice.

[Regina Barber]

The cat didn't even notice.

[Scott Detrow]

The cat's typing an application to be in a simulated Mars mission for a year.

[Ari Daniel]

Yeah, he would go. He's got nothing on his calendar.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

I guess.

[Scott Detrow]

Cats would be great.

[Regina Barber]

They would be amazing.

[Scott Detrow]

Yes.

[Ari Daniel]

Send cats to Mars.

[Regina Barber]

Well, thank you. Thank you both for being here.

[Ari Daniel]

Anita, thank you for having me.

[Regina Barber]

If you like this Spacing out episode and you have a friend that loves space, too, share it with them. It will help our show. And, hey, give us a follow on the NPR app or wherever else you're listening from, so you'll never miss a new episode or a new episode of Spacing Out. This episode was Produced by Burly McCoy and Megan Lim. It was edited by Christopher Intagliota, Amina Khan, and our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez.

[Ari Daniel]

Tyler Jones checked the facts. Robert Rodriguez and Valentina Rodriguez Sanchez were the audio engineers. I'm Ari Daniel.

[Regina Barber]

And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from npr.

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