Parks as Practice Fields

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has served as a critical analog site for NASA's Mars exploration efforts, providing extreme environments to test landers, rovers, and drones. Since the 1960s, astronauts have conducted lunar simulation field trips in multiple national parks, including Hawaii Volcanoes, while recent decades have seen the park used extensively for testing advanced robotic systems designed for Mars missions. These include a wall-scaling robot and a lava tube-probing quadcopter, with the goal of preparing for future human and robotic exploration of celestial bodies.

Lull, R. B. (2026). Parks as Practice Fields. Our Natural Lab, 145–163. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197824450.003.0008