It was difficult to concentrate that day when we knew it may still be roaming about nearby.” Sustaining technology “Thankfully, we never came face to face with one, but one morning when we woke up, we found fresh polar bear tracks in the snow that led right up to the door of the habitat. “In order to protect ourselves from the threat of a polar bear we carried rifles at all times when outside of the habitat,” he says. The only reference material they had to educate themselves on the local population was David Attenborough’s ‘Frozen Planet.’ Neighbouring locals included arctic foxes and the occasional polar bear. That said, having nature on their doorstep wasn’t always an entirely positive experience. He acknowledges that in space, the experience may prove rather more challenging, as the lunar landscape is unchanging and barren. When we looked out across the horizon, I could see further than I ever have before, and at night the colours of the sky were absolutely incredible.” “The landscape that we found ourselves in was incredible, like something out of a nature documentary. “Overall, the entire experience was positive,” says Sebastian. So, what is it really like to spend three months in a 17.2m³ pod, cut off from life as we know it? Beautiful landscapes and meeting the locals Thankfully, the years of work that went into perfecting the habitat, and the duo’s intuitive and deep knowledge of every bolt and screw of the structure, meant that the mission was a success. Today, four months after we chatted with Sebastian at the edge of civilization, he is back at LUNARK’s home base, a busy workshop in Copenhagen. As we have written in previous articles, the aim was to road-test their prototype Lunar habitat in one of the harshest, most unforgiving terrains on earth.

Back in autumn 2020, space architects and modern-day explorers Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen set out on an intrepid mission to the arctic north of Greenland.

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