Group of six take a step to Mars – will live in a Hawaiian volcano for six months to imitate life on Mars

NASA knows that Mars is the next frontier to be conquered in Space and has, accordingly, drawn up plans to create a corpus of humans who can make it to Mars and, probably, settle down on the Red Planet timesofindia.indiatimes.com.

The latest from NASA is this group of six persons, three men and three women, who would step into a dome-shaped building on a Hawaiian volcano and live there for the next eight months – they would mimic a stay on the surface of Mars.
Each of the six members would receive round-trip airfare to Hawaii, a $11,500 stipend, food and, lodging.
This is believed to be a part of a NASA-financed study and is called Hi-Seas which is an acronym for the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation.
The objective is to examine how well a small group of people, isolated from civilization, can get along and work together because when astronauts finally head toward Mars years from now — NASA has set a tentative date in the 2030s — it will be a long and lonely journey. The one way journey to Mars would be of six months duration, stay on Mars for 500-days and then return another six months.

This would be a sort of psychological experiment because Isolation can lead to depression and personality conflicts can spin out of control over the months.