For nearly a decade, the U.S. space agency funded research and missions at a test site on Hawaiʻi Island built to simulate the surface of Mars.
The site is called HI-SEAS, or the Hawaiʻi Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, and organizers recently secured NASA funding to resume testing at the research station after a hiatus of several years.
Kim Binsted is a professor in the Information and Computer Sciences Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and the principal investigator for HI-SEAS. She spoke with HPR about the upcoming plans for the program.
According to Binsted, HI-SEAS simulations are critical for testing how humans react under the conditions of long-term space travel.
“We've done simulations up to 12 months in length, and you can think of them as a dress rehearsal for space exploration,” she told HPR. “Our funding in the past has always been about behavioral health and performance, which is essentially astronaut psychology. So, will they continue to stay psychologically healthy enough to do the things they need to do to have a safe mission?”
While previous testing used the site primarily as an analog for Mars, Binsted said that the new NASA grant will expand the types of tests HI-SEAS can run.
“Before, we focused just on the surface of Mars. Now they want us to say, what if instead of six people on Mars, we want four people on the moon, or what if we want two people in transit from the Earth to the moon, or on a space station orbiting the moon?” she said.
“The idea is that the habitat can serve these other mission profiles as well, instead of just the long duration Mars missions.”
With the funding comes expanded opportunities for students and scientists in Hawai’i to undertake more critical research on space travel.
“We have a lot of education and public outreach coming from the site and coming from HI-SEAS,” Binsted explained. “So I really believe that we return a lot of value to the state of Hawai’i, and I would like to make sure that everyone knows that.”
A public comment period recently ended for a draft environmental assessment of the project. The University of Hawaiʻi is expected to submit a final environmental assessment to the state later this summer.
This story aired on The Conversation on June 2, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
