On Sunday, the latest six-member crew to help show how a journey to Mars might work will step into Mauna Loa’s cool, fresh air after spending eight months confined in a dome-like tent there.

Researchers hope the data gathered from this crew — the fifth in the ongoing Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation project, or HI-SEAS — will eventually help select the best team candidates for an actual mission to Mars.

“Every crew has conflict. The conflicts vary quite a lot,” said HI-SEAS Principal Investigator Kim Binsted, who’s a University of Hawaii, Manoa professor.

In these close-quartered simulations some 8,000 feet up Mauna Loa’s jagged, rocky slope, resiliency has proven to be key.

“It’s definitely one of our themes,” Binsted said Wednesday. “The moral of the story is you can’t avoid conflict completely — it’s how you respond to it.”

Near the end of their mission, the latest HI-SEAS volunteers faced a unique challenge: natural disasters back home. Two members had family in the path of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, according to Binsted, but to help simulate the vast distance between Earth and Mars there’s a 20-minute delay in sending communications between the dome and mission support officials around the world.

If crew members in the dome had any questions about the back-to-back storms, two of the most destructive known to hit the U.S. mainland, they would have to wait 40 minutes for a round-trip response. To address the lag, mission support was ordered to send the latest storm updates so that the crew wouldn’t have to ask for them, Binsted said.

They further encouraged friends and families in contact with those in the path of the storm to reach out directly to the crew members with any updates, she added.

HI-SEAS researchers used sensors that tracked proximity and voice volume to monitor how different crew personalities got along, according to Binsted. The sensors did not pick up the actual conversations because that’s considered too intrusive, she added.

Crews also played a NASA-­designed computer game together, called “COHESION,” to offer more relationship details. HI-SEAS researchers will compare this data to the crews’ own reports of how well they got along, according to Binsted.

It’s not the first HI-SEAS simulation to incorporate these tools, but HI-SEAS is refining its use with each mission, she said.

Crew members knew what the tools were for, but because “they’re giving up eight months of their lives” they have an incentive to provide the most accurate, honest data possible, Binsted added.

Eventually, NASA could use the Hawaii missions’ findings on crew cohesion, as well the crews’ use of water and other resources, to help the space agency plan expeditions to the red planet. Last year, officials at the nation’s space agency reported having at least a $3 billion annual budget dedicated to future Mars missions.

The agency has invested more than $2 million to fund the missions on Mauna Loa, including one more eight-month simulation set to start in January, according to Binsted. But more questions remain on the team dynamics of a Mars mission, and she hopes NASA will fund several more.

The space agency could send astronauts on a two- to three-year mission to orbit Mars and return to Earth as early as the 2030s, Bill Hill, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, said in 2016.

Binsted still thinks that’s a realistic goal.

“The cynic might say Mars has been 20 years in the future for the past 50 years,” she said Wednesday. But NASA has gotten more serious about pursuing such a voyage.

“Although the new administration will make some changes, it won’t remove that target,” Binsted added.