Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?
NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a Mars mission: the trauma of isolation.

Alyssa Shannon was on her morning commute from Oakland to Sacramento, where she worked as an advanced-practice nurse at the university hospital, when NASA called to tell her that she had been selected for a Mars mission. She screamed and pulled off the highway. As soon as she hung up, she called her partner, an information-security operations manager at the University of California, Berkeley, named Jake Harwood. . .

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nytimes.com