Artemis Moonbase Simulation One
Artemis Moonbase Simulation One was a two-week lunar analog exercise carried out by Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) Crew 45 from February 26 to March 11, 2006, at the Mars Society's research station near Hanksville, Utah. For the duration of the mission the crew renamed the facility the "Moon" Desert Research Station and operated it as a simulated lunar outpost — the first Artemis Moonbase Simulation, a lunar analog exercise run inside a Mars analog station.
| Artemis Moonbase Simulation One | |
|---|---|
| Mission | MDRS Crew 45 |
| Dates | February 26 – March 11, 2006 |
| Site | Mars Desert Research Station, near Hanksville, Utah |
| Sponsor | The Moon Society, with Mars Society infrastructure |
The mission ran a compact but ambitious program of engineering builds, life support studies, human factors research, and field survey work, all reframed through a lunar lens.
A Moon base at a Mars station
The premise was straightforward and a little audacious. Rather than build a dedicated lunar facility, the crew treated the existing station and its surrounding landscape as a Moon base, pointing to the stark, low relief terrain around MDRS as a reasonable visual stand-in for lunar ground. The exercise was framed as a Moon Society undertaking, carried under the Artemis Moonbase banner, and it drew on the Mars Society infrastructure that already made sustained field simulations possible.
Crew 45
Nine people staffed the simulation, each carrying one or more operational roles across command, engineering, science, and documentation. As crew biologist Leslie Wickman later recorded, the team pooled expertise in nutrition, software engineering, geology, land surveying, construction, journalism, nursing, human factors, and biology, with most members qualified in more than one area.
| Crew member | Role |
|---|---|
| Peter Kokh | Expedition Leader and Commander |
| Laurel-Ruth Ladd | Executive Officer and Logistics |
| Guido Meyer | Crew Journalist |
| Leslie Wickman | Crew Biologist |
| Steven Winikoff | Chief Engineer |
| William Fung-Schwarz | Human Factors, Health and Safety Officer |
| Ben Huset | Crew Astronomer and Assistant Engineer |
| Chip Proser | Crew Videographer and Documentarian |
| Hugh S. Gregory | Crew Scientist and Project MAST Surveyor |
A flag for the base
Every settlement wants a banner, and this one designed its own. The Moon base flag used three colors, each standing for something the crew hoped a future lunar community would depend on:
- Gray — Moon dust
- Blue — water
- Green — life
The flag flew in the desert wind for the duration of the mission.
The research program
The simulation was organized around a set of projects and studies rather than a single headline experiment. Several were engineering builds, several were life support and human factors studies, and several were modest field science efforts that fit the two-week window. The full program, as recorded by the crew:
- EVA Sim Lite. A lightweight approach to simulated extravehicular activity, using accessible analog suits and gear so crew members could rehearse the routine of suiting up, cycling through the airlock, and working outside the habitat.
- Construction of a simulated pressurized tunnel. The crew assembled a framed and netted walkway to represent a connecting tunnel between habitat modules, later dedicated as the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Tunnel. It reflected a recurring theme in surface base design, namely the value of moving between structures without a full suit-up.
- MDRS GreenHab water recycling study. Work in the station greenhouse examined how water could be cycled through a plant-based system, a small-scale look at the closed-loop life support that any long-duration base will require.
- Simulation of an early space frontier diet. The crew ate as an early outpost might, testing shelf-stable and simply prepared foods alongside fresh growth from the greenhouse to understand what a frontier menu could realistically look like.
- Human factors psychosocial study. Led by the Human Factors officer, this thread tracked how a small, isolated team lived and worked together under simulation conditions, including interviews, journaling, and observation of daily crew dynamics.
- The MoonSkin suit project. An experiment in a close-fitting counterpressure-style garment, worn with a helmet and pack, exploring whether a lighter and more mobile suit concept could serve surface work better than a bulky pressurized design.
- Space and EVA suit ergonomics test. A companion effort that put analog suits through the physical realities of field work, from riding a rover to walking rough ground, to assess comfort, mobility, and fit.
- Site management study with two demonstration projects. A practical look at how a base keeps order over time, including the handling, sorting, and staging of materials and equipment around the station.
- Dust control study. An examination of how dust tracks into the habitat on boots and gear, a problem that is a genuine hazard on the Moon and a useful thing to rehearse on Earth.
- Project MAST road documentation and surveys. Field survey work mapping and documenting the routes and features around the station, carried out by the crew surveyor.
- Several modest science projects. Two smaller efforts rounded out the program, one testing which colors aid visibility and survival in the field, and one recycling scrap and trash into useful material.
Several of these efforts produced measurable data that was later written up and published.
Published research and findings
The most substantial published output from the mission came from crew biologist Leslie Wickman, whose paper "Eight Days in Inner Space: My Experience at the Moon Desert Research Station" appeared in the 2007 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings.[1] It set out data from three of her projects, covering water reclamation, spacesuit biomechanics, and crew time allocation. The findings summarized below are drawn from that paper.
Water reclamation in the GreenHab
The GreenHab treatment system routed used water from the habitat sinks and shower through a series of anaerobic and aerobic tanks planted with aquatic vegetation, then through filters and an ultraviolet treatment step, before returning it for use in the toilets. Using flow meters, the study measured average daily consumption of about 11.7 gallons of potable water per crewmember for sinks and showers, and about 5.8 gallons of recycled water per crew per day for the toilet, for a combined total near 17.5 gallons per crew per day. Crew members showered roughly once every five to six days and relied on sponge baths in between.
The water quality results were sobering. Comparing samples entering and leaving the GreenHab, the only meaningful improvements were qualitative, namely reduced odor, clearer water, and less particulate matter. Ammonia fell only slightly and dissolved oxygen rose only slightly, and both the incoming and outgoing water remained highly alkaline. In practical terms the treated water was suitable for watering plants or flushing toilets, but not for drinking. The paper attributed the limited performance largely to high alkalinity suppressing plant and microbial activity, and recommended changes such as a filtration bed modeled on a wetland, citric acid dosing to lower alkalinity, greater aeration, and a solar still as a final polishing step.
Spacesuit biomechanics
The suit study brought together the MoonSkin and ergonomics work. It compared a test subject across three conditions: unsuited in street clothes, wearing the heavy canvas MDRS simulation suit, and wearing the prototype neoprene MoonSkin garment, a mechanical counterpressure design in the lineage of physician Paul Webb's Space Activity Suit from the 1960s. Fifty-four joint range-of-motion measurements were recorded for each condition, spanning the ankle, knee, hip, torso, neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, and hand, along with bending, kneeling, squatting, lifting, and climbing tasks.
The MoonSkin suit allowed a greater range of motion than the canvas suit in 30 of the measurements and a smaller range in 13, with particular advantages in shoulder flexibility, hand grip, ankle flexion, and torso movement. The paper was candid about the limits of the exercise, noting that neither prototype applied enough pressure to mimic a real suit in the near vacuum of the Moon, so the mobility readings were more encouraging than a true pressure suit would allow. The recommendation was to add fabric stiffening to future simulation suits for realism, while pursuing the close-fitting counterpressure approach for actual planetary suits.
Crew time allocation
The activity study logged how crew members spent their days. Sleep took the largest share at about 8.4 hours per day. Dedicated project work, meaning the time each specialist could spend in their own discipline, averaged only about 1.9 hours per day. Work duty overall ran to roughly 10.4 hours per day against about 5.3 waking off-duty hours, a ratio notably higher than both a modeled lunar schedule and reported Space Shuttle and Space Station norms. Combined with earlier energy expenditure modeling, the observed schedule implied a daily expenditure near 3,418 kilocalories per crewmember, about 16 percent above the earlier lunar estimate. The practical lesson, echoed in the paper's recommendations, was that a real outpost needs to protect blocks of time for specialist work and for rest.
The remaining projects
Results from the other studies, including the color differentiation experiment in a largely monochrome environment, a virtual reality tour of the station and its surroundings, the crew psychosocial survey, and the Early Space Frontier Diet, were compiled by the crew on the Mars Society field season summary pages. Commander Peter Kokh also published post-mission reflections through the Moon Society, including a writeup filed in early April 2006 and a longer retrospective some months later that weighed where a dedicated lunar analog program might go next, including the possibility of a purpose-built lunar analog site rather than a return to MDRS.
Some things that would not happen on the Moon
Analog work has a way of reminding you where you actually are. During the campaign, the desert delivered a heavy snowfall that buried the station, the observatory, the rovers, and the flag in white. It made for striking photographs and a fair point from the crew, since a blanket of snow is one experience a real lunar base would be spared. The habitat under snow was a reminder that Earth stays firmly in the loop, even when you are pretending to be somewhere else.
Mission support from San Diego
A field crew is only half of a simulation. Throughout the mission, the Mars Society San Diego chapter served as remote Mission Support for both MDRS and FMARS operations, handling the communications and coordination role that a real Earth-based control team would fill. The effort drew local press attention as well, with Nina Jimenez of KGTV Channel 10 interviewing the San Diego Mission Support crew about their work.
The archive and the takeaway
The crew published daily reports and photographs from the 2005–2006 field season, originally hosted by the Mars Society. Readers who want the primary record should look for the field season archive under the Mars Society MDRS pages. Because this material dates to 2006, some original links may have since moved, so a search of the Mars Society and Moon Society sites is the surest route to the surviving reports.
Nearly twenty years on, Artemis Moonbase Simulation One reads as an early and genuinely creative attempt to treat one analog site as two different worlds. It showed that a Mars station could be pressed into service for lunar rehearsal, and it put a Moon Society flag — gray for dust, blue for water, green for life — in the ground of a place chosen to look like the Moon.
Sources
Mission background and project descriptions are drawn from the Artemis Moonbase Simulation One presentation prepared by The Mars Society San Diego, covering MDRS Crew 45. Quantitative findings are drawn from the Wickman IEEE paper.[1] Additional context comes from Commander Peter Kokh's post-mission reports published by The Moon Society.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Leslie A. Wickman, "Eight Days in Inner Space: My Experience at the Moon Desert Research Station", 2007 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings, IEEE, 2007. DOI 10.1109/AERO.2007.352983. A copy is also available on ResearchGate.