Aspiring Martians

Most people imagine a straight line into the space industry.

Mason Robbins’ story is anything but.

After beginning his career in international relations and conflict studies, Mason worked with organizations including the United Nations, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and innovation hubs across Europe before eventually finding his way back to his childhood passion for space exploration.

Today, he serves as CEO of Star Helix, contribu...

What does it take to pursue a dream that feels bigger than the world around you?

This week, Joe sits down with Hajar Azizi, a 20-year-old engineering student at École Centrale Casablanca and an active member of the Moroccan Association for Space Studies (MASS), to explore how curiosity, determination, and community can help turn seemingly impossible ambitions into tangible steps forward.

Hajar is part of a new generation of young Mor...

What does it take to build a space community where one barely exists?

This week, I sit down with Ismail El Omari, a Moroccan space architect, analog astronaut, educator, and founder of the Moroccan Association for Space Studies (MASS).

From his childhood fascination with space to participating in analog astronaut missions and becoming one of Morocco’s leading space advocates, Ismail shares how he’s helping inspire a new g...

For this month’s Inside the Habitat, we’re heading to the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii to explore one of the most iconic analog habitats on Earth: HI-SEAS.

For more than a decade, HI-SEAS has helped researchers study what it takes to keep future astronauts healthy, productive, and sane during long-duration missions to Mars. Crews have spent months, and even an entire year, living in isolation inside a dome surrounded by...

This month’s special Everyday Mars episode heads into the alternate-history universe of For All Mankind with former NASA astronaut, SpaceX engineer, and series technical advisor Garrett Reisman.

If you somehow haven’t started the show yet… first of all, what are you doing? And second: fair warning, this conversation contains spoilers for Seasons 1 through 4. At this point though, you’ve had years to catch up...

For the 50th aspiring Martian feature, Joe sits down with Hanna Harutyunyan: robotics and mechatronics engineering student, researcher, and analog astronaut widely recognized as Armenia’s first analog astronaut.

Hanna has participated in analog missions at the Analog Astronaut Training Center in Poland and LunAres Research Station, supported the Austrian Space Forum’s AMADEE-24 Mars simulation in Armenia, and worked with...

This week on Aspiring Martians, I’m joined by Arshleen Kaur Sahni, a space architect, researcher, analog astronaut trainee, and the founder of Arkasa.

As a child in India, Arshleen would spend hours staring at the Moon from her window, completely captivated by space. Years later, after discovering the field of space architecture almost by accident, she found a way to combine her love of space, human psychology, and design into...

What does it actually take to simulate life on the Moon… inside a Swiss mountain?

In this month’s Inside the Habitat, we go deep into the Asclepios Project, a student-led analog mission program designed to prepare the next generation of astronauts, engineers, and scientists for the realities of space exploration.

Founded at EPFL, Asclepios brings together students from around the world to design, train for, and execute f...

What happens to the Overview Effect when Earth is no longer the center of your universe?

In this special Everyday Mars episode, Joe sits down with Frank White, the visionary behind The Overview Effect, to explore how one of the most profound psychological experiences in spaceflight might transform as humanity pushes toward Mars.

For decades, astronauts in low Earth orbit have described a powerful shift in perspective when looking bac...

From Mars simulations… to mission control.

This week on Aspiring Martians, Joe is joined by Cassandra Klos, a photographer, curator, and analog astronaut whose work lives at the intersection of art, science, and the future of human spaceflight.

Cassandra is the creator of Mars on Earth, a long-running project documenting space analog missions, those carefully designed simulations where humans rehearse life on Mars right here o...

What does it look like to prepare for Mars… from a place the space industry often overlooks?

In this episode of Aspiring Martians, I sit down with Isaac Macharia Gathu, founder and president of Mars Society Kenya, to talk about building a path to space where none previously existed.

Isaac is a Kenyan IT technician, entrepreneur, analog astronaut, and one of the leading voices pushing for Africa’s role in the future of hu...

What does it take to build a Mars mission… from scratch?

In this month’s Inside the Habitat, we head to Wadi Rum, Jordan, a place so otherworldly it’s often called “The Valley of the Moon,” to explore MENA, the first women-led space organization in the region dedicated to STEM, inclusion, and human space exploration.

Founded in 2024, MENA is already pushing boundaries, combining education, analog missio...

Today is one of those days that changes the trajectory of everything.

As Artemis II launches humanity back beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in over 50 years, we’re marking the moment with a special bonus episode of Aspiring Martians.

Because this mission isn’t just about going to the Moon. It’s about proving we can go further.

Artemis II will send astronauts around the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft, testi...

We’re going somewhere humanity hasn’t quite been willing to go yet… not physically, but conversationally.

Because if we’re serious about building a future on Mars, we have to ask a simple question: are we designing that future for everyone?

This week, I’m joined by Manju Bangalore: engineer, researcher, astronaut-in-training, and founder of Operation Period to explore one of the most overlooked gaps in ...

Today we've got the ULTIMATE aspiring Martian!

This week, Joe is joined by Alyssa Carson: science communicator, astrobiologist, and one of the most recognizable voices of the so-called “Mars Generation.” You may know her as “Blueberry,” the kid who decided at just three years old that she wanted to go to Mars...and then actually kept going.

But this conversation isn’t about a childhood dream. It’s ...

What if the path to space started not in a government astronaut corps… but on your laptop?

This week on Aspiring Martians, I’m joined by Benedetta Facini — citizen scientist, science communicator, asteroid hunter, and newly selected astronaut candidate with Titans Space Industries.

Benedetta’s journey into space didn’t begin with rocket equations or flight school. It started with curiosity, a telescope,...

What does it really take to become an aspiring Martian?

For some, the journey starts with engineering degrees, astronaut training programs, and analog missions in the desert. For others, it begins much earlier — with challenges that shape resilience, perspective, and a deep curiosity about the human body in extreme environments.

This week I’m joined by Shriya Musuku, a mechanical engineer, analog astronaut, EMT, and astro...

This month on Inside the Habitat, we step inside one of Europe’s most respected analog research facilities: LunAres Research Station in Poland.

Founded in 2017 and located inside a former post-military airport hangar, LunAres has become a globally recognized platform for human spaceflight research. The station runs 10–12 analog missions per year, hosts crews of four to eight participants, and has supported more than 65 s...

In this special Everyday Mars episode commemorating Mars Love Month, returning guest Dr. Simon Dubé joins Joe to explore one of the most surprising frontiers of space settlement: artificial companions. If Mars is going to be home — not just a research outpost — we’ll need more than life-support systems and radiation shielding. We’ll need emotional infrastructure.

Simon is a researcher whose work sits at the i...