As per reports, six NASA recruits have locked themselves inside a dome for almost a year in Hawaii on Friday. It would be the longest US isolation experiment that aims to help NASA to prepare itself for a pioneering journey to Mars.

The crew including a French astrobiologist, a German physicist, a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil scientist will live inside a dome on a barren, northern slope of Mauna Loa.

The crew will be living in a dome that is 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter and 20 feet tall. The place will have very less vegetation and no animals around. The team entered the dome at 3:00 pm as per Hawaii Time on Saturday, marking the officials start to the 12-month mission.

As per reports, the dome has separate small rooms for men and women, with space for a sleeping cot and desk. They crew will spend their days eating food like powdered cheese and canned tuna, only going outside if dressed in a spacesuit, and will ahve limited access to the Internet.

Crew member Sheyna Gifford described the team as six people who want to change the world by making it possible for people to leave it at will.

Architect Tristan Bassingthwaighte said, "He will be studying architectural methods for creating a more habitable environment and increasing our capability to live in the extreme environments of Earth and other worlds".

Missions to the International Space Station last for six months. The US space agency has recently conducted four-month and eight-month-long isolation experiments.