It’s day 25. You wake up in your bunk pod in a snow-capped Martian landscape, far from civilization. Outside it’s -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit). After meditating and eating a breakfast of freeze-dried dumplings, you and your six-person crew don space suits over your thermal underwear and head out into the sandstorm on a mission.

This isn’t a fever dream. It’s a month-long survival challenge deep in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert that’s designed to simulate life on Mars — for tourists.

The project, called the MARS-V Project, is under development by MARS-V, a non-governmental organization based in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. They’re working to build a fully-fledged Mars analog station in the Gobi to prepare for human travel to the red planet — and expect to welcome the first to

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