Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is an essay collection, inspired by the author's four-month stay inside a simulated Martian habitat. In 2013, Kate Greene was selected as a crew member for NASA's newest Mars analog—a project called HI-SEAS. Its home base is a dome on the Hawai'ian volcano of Mauna Loa, situated at 8,000 feet above sea level. The mission's main goal was to test food systems for a three-year journey, but there were other studies too: Assessing anti-microbial clothing, sleep patterns, the way isolation affects stress, health, and social interactions. Kate and her fellow "astronauts" lived and breathed these and other research studies for four months of isolation. The essays in Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars are shaped by Kate's relationships with the scientists who created HI-SEAS, her crewmates, her family, and friends back home. It's informed by personal reflection as well as by literature, film, music,...