Aspiring Martians

What if students did not have to wait until they became scientists, engineers, or astronauts to find out what working on Mars might actually feel like?
This month on Inside the Habitat, we travel to eastern Slovakia to explore Cosmic Region / Kozmický región, the country’s first dedicated analog habitat for simulated missions to the Moon and Mars.
Located at the Rožňava Observatory, COSMIC REGION officially opened in 2025. Its two connected geodesic domes contain science and living spaces, an airlock, limited hygiene facilities, environmental monitoring, and everything crews need to begin experiencing some of the operational constraints of living away from Earth.
But what makes COSMIC REGION especially interesting is its emphasis on education.
Its first full independent mission, MarsonautiSK, put four student analog astronauts inside the habitat for seven days while another student team operated Mission Control. They conducted research, worked through communication delays, performed simulated EVAs, managed limited resources, and dealt with unexpected mission challenges.
Our guide is Dr. Michaela Musilová, a Slovak astrobiologist, explorer, educator, and one of the most experienced analog mission commanders in the world.
Michaela previously served as Director of HI-SEAS in Hawaiʻi, has organized more than 40 simulated lunar and Martian missions, and has personally commanded nearly 40 analog missions across a wide range of extreme environments.
We talk about how COSMIC REGION was built, what Michaela brought home from decades of analog experience, the lessons learned from its first mission, the importance of designing simulations around actual human beings, and why giving students meaningful roles now could help build the space workforce of the future.
Because sometimes the first step toward Mars is not launching a rocket.
It is giving someone the chance to believe they belong there.
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Inside HI-SEAS with Dr. Kim Binsted: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-hi-seas-with-dr-kim-binsted/id1777937758?i=1000770728211
Michaela's website: https://www.michaelamusilova.com/
Cosmic Region: https://www.gos.sk/kozmicky-region-cosmic-region
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A huge thank you to Michaela for taking the time to join me today and for sharing her extraordinary journey, her perspective, and all the work she’s doing to help make space exploration feel accessible to the next generation. If you’d like to follow along with what she’s doing, you can find her on Instagram at @astro_michaela and, most importantly, support the incredible work she continues to do.
And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project!

Could we actually grow coffee on Mars?
And even if we could, would it be worth the space, water, energy, and years of patience required to get a single coffee plant producing?
This month on Everyday Mars, I’m joined by Peter Giuliano, Senior Advisor for Scientific Communication and Engagement Strategy at the Specialty Coffee Association and one of the world’s leading voices on coffee science.
Peter has spent decades studying coffee from nearly every angle, from agriculture and flavor to consumer behavior, coffee culture, and the strange but remarkably durable role this drink plays in human life.
And Mars presents a fascinating problem.
Coffee is not exactly the ideal space crop. It can be environmentally finicky, takes years to mature, occupies a surprising amount of room, and produces relatively little usable coffee for the resources required.
So why bring it?
Because coffee has never just been about caffeine.
In our conversation, Peter explains how coffee became tied to stimulation, social connection, flavor, ritual, and hospitality, and why those qualities could become even more valuable in isolated settlements far from Earth.
We talk about what makes good and bad coffee, growing coffee in controlled environments, instant coffee in space, flavor changes during spaceflight, the engineering behind drinking from a cup in microgravity, the possibility of synthetic coffee aromas, and what the first café on Mars might actually look like.
And because a Martian sol gives us roughly 39 minutes beyond an Earth day, we also make what I believe is an extremely reasonable proposal:
Make it the official Martian coffee break.
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Peter's Substack "How to Eat Everything": https://howtoeateverything.substack.com/
Coffee Decoded: https://sca.coffee/sca-news/coffee-decoded-14-dialling-in
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A huge thank you to Peter for taking the time to join me today and for sharing his knowledge, curiosity, and perspective. And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project, even when I start insisting that “coffee Go-Gurt” is legitimate spaceflight history and therefore absolutely appropriate dinner-table conversation.

Carlota Keimer originally applied to spend time at a Mars analog in the Utah desert.
Then the mission moved considerably farther north.
This week on Aspiring Martians, I’m joined by Carlota Keimer, a mechanical and aerospace engineer, pilot trainee, science communicator, and backup engineer for Hypatia III, the next mission from the Hypatia Mars Association.
Hypatia III is now preparing to conduct its mission at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, or FMARS, on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic, one of the most remote Mars analog environments on Earth.
Carlota’s path to the Arctic has already taken her through an unusually wide range of space experiences. She studied mechanical engineering in Spain before pursuing aerospace engineering at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, worked on satellite projects, completed ESA’s Clean Space Training, and has worked testing ESA’s ALTIUS satellite mission.
Her fascination with building things for space started even earlier, when she helped construct a homemade probe as a teenager and sent it roughly 35 kilometers into the stratosphere.
Now that curiosity has expanded into satellite operations, sustainable spacecraft design, parabolic flight, human spaceflight research, and Mars analog exploration.
We talk about Hypatia III’s move from Utah to the Arctic, what it means to prepare for FMARS, the importance of crew relationships and mentorship, the challenge of making spaceflight more sustainable, and Carlota’s growing role in helping younger students see themselves in STEM.
Because exploration is not always about knowing exactly where you are going.
Sometimes it is about being willing to take the next step anyway.
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A huge thank you to Carlota for taking the time to join me today and for sharing her journey, perspective, and curiosity. And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project.
Follow Hypatia: https://hypatiamars.com/en/

This week on Aspiring Martians, I’m joined by Dr. Eiman Jahangir, a cardiologist, author, speaker, and astronaut whose new book, A Heart for Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible, traces the winding path between two lifelong ambitions.
Eiman was born in Iran and came to the United States as a young child. After visiting the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville at age six, the idea of going to space took hold.
Medicine eventually became the path he could see clearly. He built a career as a physician and cardiologist, working with patients through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
But the astronaut dream never disappeared.
After years of applications, rejections, near misses, and persistence, Eiman flew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard in August 2024 and became the 704th person to travel to space.
In this conversation, we talk about childhood dreams, medicine, mortality, rejection, resilience, family, what it feels like to finally reach space, and the surprisingly complicated question of what comes next once the thing you have spent decades chasing is no longer a dream.
We also talk about the story behind A Heart for Space, and why Eiman’s journey is ultimately less about one rocket flight and more about knowing when to pivot, when to persist, and how to keep building a meaningful life while pursuing something that may never happen.
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Go buy his new book and read it until you become an astronaut yourself!
https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Space-Astronauts-Achieving-Impossible/dp/1637635966
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A huge thank you to Eiman for taking the time to join me today and for sharing his journey, perspective, and dreams for space. And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project.

This week on Aspiring Martians, I’m joined by Dr. Alexandra Kemp, aka The Singing Space Traveler, an aerospace human-factors engineer, bioastronautics researcher, educator, opera singer, NASA Solar System Ambassador and aspiring commercial astronaut.
Alex currently works as an Advanced Human Factors Systems Engineer at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, where she helps tackle a deceptively complicated problem: how do we design aircraft and aerospace systems around the actual humans who have to use them?
Because a system can work perfectly according to the mathematics, physics and engineering and still fail if it does not work for the person sitting in front of it.
Alex’s path into aerospace has been anything but conventional. She began in communications and classical vocal performance, spent eight summers attending Space Camp, later earned a master’s in aeronautics and space studies, and eventually completed a PhD at Purdue University focused on aerospace human factors.
We talk about the surprising similarities between opera and engineering, what human-factors engineers actually do, why mentorship and representation matter in aerospace, and how Alex’s lifelong interest in human spaceflight has evolved into research conducted in microgravity.
That includes a deeply personal project examining ways to potentially reduce blood-clot risk during spaceflight, an area of research Alex pursued after losing her mother to pulmonary embolism. Her work now uses parabolic flight, ultrasound and wearable technology to investigate how humans might be protected during future missions.
It is a conversation about engineering, performance, curiosity, loss, mentorship and what happens when seemingly unrelated parts of a life eventually begin fitting together.
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A huge thank you to Alex for taking the time to join me today and for sharing her journey, curiosity, and perspective. And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project, even when I start wondering whether our future Mars settlements are going to need an opera house before they need a second grocery store.