For fifteen days, I lived inside a 36-foot solar-powered dome on the barren, rust-colored flank of Mauna Loa, 8,200 feet above sea level, with five other crewmates and no way out.
This was HI-SEAS — the Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation habitat — a Mars- and Moon-like isolation station built by the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa with NASA's backing. From the outside, it looks almost toylike: a squat white geodesic dome dropped onto a landscape so barren and red it could pass for another planet, because that's precisely the point. Inside, a cramped loft holds six coffin-sized bedrooms; downstairs, a kitchen, lab, exercise corner, and a simulated airlock keep a crew alive and sane while cut off from the outside world.
I was there as a Fellow International (FI'18) of the Explorers Club and crew anthropology researcher for the EuroMoonMars campaign, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG). We ran geological surveys, tested equipment meant for the Moon and Mars, and — since isolation does strange things to the mind — I spent much of the mission studying exactly that: how confinement, delayed communication, and total dependence on five strangers reshape human behavior in ways no simulation briefing can fully prepare you for.
HI-SEAS has hosted missions lasting anywhere from a few days to a full year since 2013, standing in for what a real Moon or Mars mission might feel like — right down to the communication delay engineered into every message sent home. But the volcano the habitat sits on had its own plans.
In November 2022, Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in 38 years, sending lava down its Northeast Rift Zone and passing just alongside the dome — close enough to threaten it, though the habitat itself came through unscathed. No crew was inside at the time. The access road wasn't as lucky: it was cut by the flow, leaving the site reachable only by helicopter while reconstruction has slowly continued in the years since. It's a strange footnote fitting for a place built to simulate life on another world — even here, the ground itself had other ideas.
The University of Hawai'i and NASA are now working to bring the habitat back into service, with a new environmental permit in the works to reopen the site for a fresh phase of Moon and Mars research.
Know Before You Go: The habitat is not open to casual visitors — access is strictly limited to selected research crews and mission partners (NASA, University of Hawai'i, European Space Agency, International MoonBase Alliance). The surrounding slopes of Mauna Loa, however, are visible from nearby hiking trails, offering a glimpse of the otherworldly terrain that makes this one of the most convincing Mars analogs on Earth.
