IQALUIT - For the second year in a row, a bright yellow Humvee truck traversed across the High Arctic, heading for the Haughton-Mars Project Research Station on Devon Island.

Iqalummiut heard why NASA is interested in Devon Island at a presentation on the Haughton-Mars Project at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit on May 3. From left are Zach Carpenter, Haughton-Mars Project director Pascal Lee and Hope Carpenter. - photo courtesy of Jason Carpenter

The Mars Institute's Moon-1 Humvee Rover is an old military ambulance similar to those used in the Gulf War, refurbished to fit the needs of the project. It simulates a space rover driven by astronauts, and the High Arctic journey was to field test long rover drives.

Pascal Lee, the project's director and chairman of the Mars Institute, said the plan was to drive the vehicle, weighing 4.5 tonnes (roughly the same as three average-sized beluga whales), from Kugluktuk to Devon Island.

Last year, "We didn't quite make it," Lee said of the trip dubbed the Northwest Passage Drive Expedition 2009. On that trip the group left Kugluktuk on April 10 and made it to Cambridge Bay, some 500 kilometres away, on April 17. They were escorted by Joe Amarualik from Resolute and a team of Ski-Doos pulling qamutiit. During the trip, the vehicle burned on average one gallon or approximately 3.8 litres of diesel fuel every two kilometres. They encountered bad weather along the way. The vehicle was airlifted from Cambridge Bay to Resolute.

On May 5, 2010 Lee and the crew embarked on the Northwest Passage Drive Expedition 2010 to drive the vehicle from Resolute to Devon Island, some 150 kilometres away. According to the website postings updating their progress of the 2010 expedition, the first couple days of the trip were hampered by white-out conditions and blizzards. The team reached the west coast of Devon Island late in the evening on May 16. The trip took 16 days to complete. This time they were accompanied by two snowmobiles.

The NASA-led project has been running for the last 14 years, to simulate the exploration of Mars.

"It is a Mars wonderland that we have on Devon Island," Lee said.

He made a presentation about the project to a full house at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit on May 3.

While Mars is over 55 million kilometres from Earth, Lee said the terrain on Devon Island - home to the Haughton Crater - is similar to Mars in appearance and provides an excellent training ground for research.

Lee said Mars is smaller and colder than Earth, has water, polar ice caps, a volcano and canyons. He said there is also 38 per cent less gravity on the planet than on Earth. This means a person who weighs 138 pounds or 63 kilograms on Earth would only weigh 38 pounds or approximately 17 kilograms on the "red planet."

"Mars is one of the most dangerous places to explore," said Lee.

Devon Island, the world's largest uninhabited island, is the closest thing to Mars on Earth. Lee said 39 million years ago, a meteorite impact created the Haughton Crater which is approximately 1.6 kilometres deep and 20 kilometres wide.

On the island is a summer base camp occupied by Lee and other scientists. Research is conducted and prototypes of different equipment that could be used on Mars are tested. The camp includes a greenhouse where plants are grown.

"This summer we will be configuring the Humvee with suit ports," said Lee.

These are new space suits being developed to fit on back of the vehicle. He said the space suit currently used is too heavy to be used on Mars.

Ten-year-old Hope Carpenter was in the audience to listen to the presentation.

"I liked learning about the planet Mars," said Carpenter.

Equally fascinated was her seven-year-old brother Zach, who sat intently watching and listening to Lee's every word.

Another audience member asked when NASA hopes to go to Mars.

"We are hoping to go by 2035 but it is beyond the reach of any single nation," said Lee.