Space crew set for 520-day simulated Mars mission
The all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese won’t endure weightlessness, but from today they will live for 520 days in the spartan conditions of a mock spaceship and follow a harsh regimen of experiments and exercise.
The main task of the Mars-500 experiment is to study the effects of long isolation to help a future space crew cope better with stress and fatigue.
A similar experiment in 1999-2000 went awry when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian team captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls.
Russian officials downplayed the incidents, attributing it to cultural gaps and stress.
“When everybody interacts with the same people in the same space, habits and behaviour become apparent very quickly. These habits may irritate and cause indignation – and even fits of aggression,” said Mikhail Baryshev, a psychotherapist connected to the programme.
The experiment, conducted by the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems with the European Space Agency and Chinese space authorities, will simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240-day return trip.
The institute in western Moscow is the nation’s premier space medicine centre; it has served the Soviet and then Russian space programmes since the dawn of the space age. The facility built for the experiment comprises several interconnected modules with a total volume of 550 cubic meters (about 20,000 cubic feet) and a separate built-in imitator of Mars surface.
The researchers will communicate with the outside world via internet, delayed and disrupted to imitate the effects of space travel. They will eat canned food similar to that offered on the international space station and take a shower once every 10 days.
The crew will have two days off in a week, except when emergencies are simulated.
The ESA said the crew will also regularly play video games as part of the agency’s project to develop personalised software to interact with crews on future space missions.
French crew member Romain Charles said the experiments will keep the team busy in isolation.
“It’s not a jail, it’s an experiment,” he said. “It will be hard I’m sure, but we have a target to stay here 520 days and we will achieve it.”
Both Charles, 31, and Italian-Colombian Diego Urbina, 27, are engineers. China’s Wang Yue, 26, is an employee at China’s space training centre.
The 38-year-old Russian captain, Alexey Sitev, has worked at the Russian cosmonaut training centre and the two other Russians, Sukhrob Kamolov, 32 and Alexander Smoleyevsky, 33, are doctors.
The project’s chief said the European crew members will earn €120,000 for their role but he did not cite a figure for Wang.
