Aboard The Mars Desert Research Station, Utah - Talking about life on Mars can sometimes seem as much philosophy as science - just like life on Earth.

"We don't know what we don't know," said Andrea Fori, 32, a planetary geologist specializing in Martian geology. "That's good information."

Considering the grand scope of the physical universe -or even the internal universe that each individual carries inside - we know very little, Ms. Fori said. But it's a start, whether it's Mars or Earth.

"When you are aware that you're lacking information, you're much more informed than when you don't know what information you're missing," she said.

She is working hard to reduce that information gap by donating two weeks of her vacation to a project in the Utah desert. The Mars Desert Research Station is a project of the Mars Society, a group advocating exploration of the Red Planet as soon as possible.

A half-dozen explorers are living in an isolated station that mimics some of the living conditions and problems that astronauts could face.

Ms. Fori already has experience helping to resolve more earthly problems.

Every time a thunderstorm boils up and pictures of clouds dash across a television screen, it's a good bet that the images came from a satellite she helped to build.

As a systems engineer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. in Sunnyvale, Calif., she helped to integrate the world's first weather satellite - TIROS, or Television Infrared Observation Satellite. She planned how the prorgam was handled and ensured that the requirements of the project were met throughout its design and production.

Geologists will be among the first to visit Mars, she said. That's why the experience of simulating a Martian research habitat and participating in field trips - extra-vehicular activities, or EVAs - is so important.

"We will definitely need to do geological studies in person," she said. "This exercise of living in the Hab, planning, and then putting on a suit and conducting geological studies is really practical.

"When you put on a 30-pound spacesuit and you bend over and try to pick up a rock, it's difficult. Without going through the motions of doing it, you wouldn't necessarily know that.''

She said a problem that made her computer inoperable was the biggest obstacle she faced during the simulation.

"To not have that working smoothly is extremely disruptive," she said. "It's changing my whole mind frame; I'm not able to plan; three days have gone by and I haven't gotten anything done in terms of practical EVAs; and it's just really posing a big problem in many aspects of everyday life."

However, she said she was pleasantly surprised by the camaraderie that has developed among the six crew members, despite the cramped conditions of the 4 ½-by-10-foot state rooms.

"The food and the living conditions and living on top of everybody has actually gone better than I thought it would,'' she said. "I expected it to be more difficult psychologically.

"The lack of privacy, being dirty, not having good food to eat - I thought all those things would make your mind frame skewed to thinking about those issues instead of accomplishing something on EVAs. But the domestic issues have been less of a problem."

Ms. Fori, who grew up in Coxsackie, N.Y., near Albany, said she never thought that she would study geology.

"No pet rocks," she said.

But she changed her mind during her undergraduate years at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y.

"I just thought it would be really neat to learn about the Earth," she said.

Her career took another turn in 1994 when she turned to planetary geology and decided to study Mars for three years to earn her masters degree at the Mackay School of Mines at the University of Nevada at Reno.

"I was never a space buff as a kid," she said. "It came through education. I was exposed to this world of really, really exciting research that was going on."

During graduate school, she received funding from NASA to investigate the mechanics of geologic faulting on Mars, such earthquakes.

In the summer of 1997, she was one of about a dozen people selected from a nationwide search for the 10-week Astrobiology Academy at the NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, Calif.

She worked with Dr. Jack Farmer, a leading biologist/geologist, to select a landing site for the 2005 Mars mission that would pick up rocks and return them to Earth. The mission to Parana Valles, potentially rich with fossils, was postponed after the loss of two NASA Mars probes a few years ago.

In the summer of 1999, she was among 80 students worldwide chosen for a 10-week-program at the International Space University in Thailand. The students were able to talk to the heads of many space agencies around the world to come up with a strategy for exploring the solar system.

"The intent is not necessarily to come up with something spectacular," she said "The intent is to learn to work together, think through ideas, and ideas for international space agencies to consider."

She said the cultural hurdles were difficult to overcome because students from some nationalities deferred to Americans and Canadians in group discussions without offering their ideas.

Now that she is in the Utah desert, she said she welcomed the opportunity to break from her routine at Lockheed Martin and focus once more on her love for Mars and geology.

"You can get in a rut building a spacecraft, and you need to step back sometimes and say, 'All right, what's the big picture here? What, as a human race, are we working toward?' So it's kind of a reality check for big goals as a human race.

"I've had a great experience. It has been a lot of fun and it has renewed my enthusiasm for Martian exploration."