Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation

March 19, 11:30am - 12:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Hamilton Library, Room 301

Spring 2015 51M Faculty Lecture Series: Sharing Our Work and Knowledge

Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation

Speaker: Dr. Kim Binsted

Description: HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, www.hi-seas.org) is a habitat on an isolated Mars-like site on the Mauna Loa side of the saddle area on the Big Island of Hawai‘i at approximately 8200 feet above sea level. Here, crews of six people live and work through long-duration simulations of Mars exploration missions (four, eight and twelve month long).

This research aims to answer several critical questions to prepare for extended space exploration, including:

  • How should the crew be selected?
  • What skillsets will they need?
  • How should they be trained?
  • How can we best monitor their physical and psychological health?
  • What should we do if a problem arises?
Our goal is to help NASA remove barriers to the human exploration of Mars.

About Dr. Binsted: Kim Binsted received her PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. Her thesis topic was the computational modeling and generation of punning riddles; her program generated puns such as "What do you call a Martian who drinks beer? An ale-ien!"

In 2002, she joined the faculty of the Information and Computer Sciences Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she does research on artificial intelligence, human-computer interfaces, and human factors for space exploration.

Dr. Binsted was Chief Scientist on the FMARS 2007 Long Duration Mission, a four-month Mars exploration analogue on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. In 2009, she spent her sabbatical as a visiting scientist at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), working on the CSA’s planetary analogues program. She is now the principal investigator for the HI-SEAS project.


Ticket Information
Free and open to the public

Event Sponsor
Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and 51M Library, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Sara Lee, (808) 956-6130, saralee@hawaii.edu,

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