A Calgary man has been selected for a high-profile mission to find out what it would be like to live on Mars.

Zac Trolley has been chosen to be crew engineer for the latest mission to the Mars Desert Research Station, in Utah.

Starting this weekend, Trolley and five other crew members will spend the next two weeks in a habitat meant to replicate what life on Mars would really be like. He and his team will be tasked with growing hydroponic vegetables while living in a series of pods, and testing gear and a space suit from the International Space Station.

The research station is run by the Mars Society, a non-profit space advocacy organization dedicated to advancing research for the human exploration of Mars.

Trolley was one of 20,000 people who applied for the job and wrote on his website this week that he’s delighted to have been chosen.

“I am very excited, as being a crew member of MDRS has been a goal of mine for many years,” he wrote.

“For many of those years I didn’t think it would be possible, that little old me would get to go on such an adventure. I’m very happy to have exceeded my expectation.”

The MDRS was established in 2001 and has already sent 181 six-person crews for two-week missions to conduct research. Crew members typically conduct research in the pods and then don a space suit simulator whenever they step out, to simulate the kind of protection they would need on Mars.

The 31-year-old Trolley is an electrical engineer who has been fascinated with space travel for years and once attended the International Space University.

He was also a finalist in the Mars One project, a planned one-way mission to set up a human colony on Mars. That project aimed to send a four-man-and-woman crew to the red planet by 2025 but the plan has been pushed back to 2031 due to problems with funding.