Saroj Kumar spends a lot of time thinking about Mars. As a master’s candidate in aerospace engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), his research centers on the use of nuclear fusion propulsion to send rockets – and astronauts – to other planets. So it was something of a surreal experience when Kumar actually had the chance to spend two weeks as a "Marsnaut" at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Hanksville, Utah, whose unforgiving environment is Earth’s closest approximation to that of the Red Planet. "That feeling of living my dream since I was nine of one day going to Mars was really special," he says.