Nope! It wasn't another Mars exploration mission, but six NASA scientists felt as though they've stayed on the red planet for a couple of months as part of the space agency's human performance study.

NASA is pretty enthusiastic when it comes to better understanding the still uncertain environment of the Earth's neighboring red planet. Hence, it isn't surprising that the space exploration agency conducted a human performance study to monitor how the human body and mind would handle staying on Mars for a certain period of time.

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On the slopes of Mauna Loa, a dormant Hawaii volcano, lies the venue for the NASA-funded study. Six scientists participated in the research and all of them were tasked to live under a dome on the said volcano where environmental conditions were designed to mimic the atmosphere on Mars, Huffington Post has learned.

Making the setup even more believable are the porthole windows that only gave the scientists a view of lava fields and mountains.

The participating scientists stayed under the dome for eight months, and on Saturday, they were finally freed from the isolating and limiting environment of the Mars-simulating facility.

Speaking of the day they were finally free to leave the dome, crew member Jocelyn Dunn said, "When we first walked out the door, it was scary not to have a suit on. We've been pretending for so long."

The human performance study helped NASA understand the effects of the isolating environment of Mars to the astronaut's emotions and performance.

During their stay under the dome, observing scientists noticed that crew members primarily relieved stress by engaging in team workouts and yoga.

"Astronauts are very stoic people, very level-headed, and there's a certain hesitancy to report problems," lead researcher Kim Binsted, of the University of Hawaii, said. "So this is a way for people on the ground to detect cohesion-related problems before they become a real issue."

News about NASA's human performance study comes just days after the agency's parachute test off the Hawaiian island of Kauai failed. The test aimed to identify efficient means of slowing down large landing spacecraft on Mars, according to ABC News.

In other news, NASA is upgrading the video quality of its uploads on YouTube using 4k Ultra High-Definition (UHD) technology.

The space agency is reportedly looking for a way to download near-realtime UHD videos, so it could deliver superb quality videos taken from the International Space Station on the Internet at a quicker rate, reports The Verge.

To get a better idea on how 4K at 60 frames-per-second videos from NASA would look like, check out the video below.

TagsNASA, Study, Mars, mission, Scientists