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Welcome to your new home on Mars.

Exterior solar panels are powering the dome-shaped habitat you're standing in. The high ceilings should make you feel comfortable, and there's a 3D-printer to make new tools.

'It might seem far-fetched, but that's a scenario that might not be too far in the future when the first mission to Mars goes ahead - and Nasa has been preparing for the trip with a new study in Hawaii.'

Teams of scientists have been simulating Martian living conditions on Earth. The Hi-Seas project, funded by Nasa, sees crews live in a habitat in Hawaii. The habitat has space for six people and amenities include bedrooms, a bathroom, workspaces and even a dining room (shown in diagram)

The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or Hi-Seas, is a Nasa sponsored project to see how a crew would cope with living on Mars.

The second of three missions was completed recently and the third, lasting a year, has just started.

It involves crews of six living in a large dome in a remote region of Hawaii, Mauna Loa.

Here the crew is confined to a dome 36ft (11 metres) wide, with a living area of about 1,000 square feet (93 square metres), according to science journalist Kate Greene, writing for Wired, who took part in the project.

'The key to keeping everybody sane? A sense of airiness,' she says.

The Hi-Seas (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) mission's crews live 8,000 feet (2,440 metres) above sea level in a geodesic-dome habitat on the northern slope of the Mauna Loa volcano (shown)

There are six pie-slice-shaped bedrooms for the crewmembers to live in, all adjacent to one another (shown in diagram). This floor is above the ground level and also has a bathroom and an open balcony to below, making the habitat seem big so the crew doesn't feel trapped

Each room has a bed, mattress and a stool. There is space under each bed for clothes to be stored. A 3D printer is also in the habitat to enable the crew to print new tools if they need to. On a future mission to Mars, items like a 3D printer will likely be invaluable as resupply missions will be scarce or non-existent

The crew must spend the entirety of their trip inside the dome. They are only allowed to venture outside when wearing appropriate spacesuits, just like future astronauts on Mars will have to do.

To prevent the crew getting claustrophobic while inside the habitat, the dome has a large ceiling and is tiered in two floors.

Regular exercise keeps the crew fit, with routines such as P90X often used.

And in the project, as would happen in real life on Mars, the delay that would be experienced by a crew on Mars was simulated by a 24-minute time delay to all communication back 'home'.

The rooms, meanwhile, are six 'pie-slice-shaped staterooms' with a mattress, desk and stool.

And to make sure they had sufficient access to supplies, the crew was given a 3D printer to make things they may have forgotten.

Power is supplied by solar power, while a hydrogen fuel cell provides back-up power in the case that levels run too low.

Earlier this year Nasa awarded $1.2 million to the Hi-Seas programme to continue its working studying the human factors that may affect a future crew on Mars.

The first two missions lasted four months, the next will take eight months and the last will take place over a year beginning in August 2015 

Throughout the studies, researchers evaluate how the crew copes in the habitat.

It's hoped the research will prove invaluable in an eventual mission to the red planet, which is expected to take place in the 2030s. 

Pictured here is the kitchen of the Mars habitat. The crew were given access to the same sorts of supplies as would be expected on a future mission to Mars. Throughout the mission, researchers evaluated how the crewmembers cope with the conditions

The crew are not allowed to leave the dome for the duration of the project except for when they do spacewalks (shown). These must be conducted in spacesuits, albeit more primitive versions of the ones that will one day be used on Mars. Spacewalks usually take place with just two or three of the six crewmembers

Nasa's ultimate goal is to take humans to the red planet in the 2030s. In December of this year they will test the Orion module (seen in the centre of the image) for the first time, which will be used to take astronauts out of and back into Earth's atmosphere, as well as to the red planet