Feature: On expedition
Image series: Dreaming of the next giant leap for humankind
Inquisitive men and women have always ventured into uncharted lands. The current destination of choice for dreamers and adventurers is the planet Mars. Early in the new millennium, the Swiss photographer Vera Hartmann accompanied training expeditions in the Utah desert organised by the US Mars Society. To this day, researchers are still there, testing how humans might in future be able to live and work on the Red Planet.
The next step into the unknown: Researchers want to travel to Mars, so they’re conducting trials in the desert landscapes of Utah in the USA. | Photos: Vera Hartmann
Every research expedition sets out with courage and dreams.
Outside Hanksville in South-West USA, geologists, astrobiologists, engineers, mechanics and physicists drive through the inhospitable environment that forms the habitat of the Mars Society. Their vehicles bear names just like the real Mars rovers: Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Sojourner.
For more than 20 years now, the Mars Society’s research station has been standing rather forlornly in the barren wastes of Utah, setting out a marker for a visionary future.
The research station run by the US Mars Society is a prototype for the habitat to be set up during a future mission to Mars.
Researchers spend between several weeks and months in the relative isolation of southern Utah’s Mars-like landscapes.
