It seemed more like a bizarre reality TV show than a high-tech international space travel experiment: Six men lived in cramped, windowless compartments for more than 17 months to simulate a mission to Mars.
When they emerged from their claustrophobic capsules on Friday in western Moscow, the researchers in blue jumpsuits looked haggard, but were all smiles.
Organizers said the 520-day experiment was the longest mock space mission ever, measuring human responses to the confinement, stress and fatigue of a round trip to Mars — minus the weightlessness, of course. They described it as a vital part of preparations for a future mission to the Red Planet, even though the huge cost and daunting technological challenges involved mean that could still be decades away.
Photo: REUTERS
The facility at Moscow’s Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, Russia’s No. 1 space medicine center, included living compartments the size of a bus, connected with several other similarly sized modules for experiments and exercise.
Scientists who organized the mock Mars mission said it differed from similar experiments by relying on the latest achievements in space medicine and human biology.
Emerging from isolation, the crew of three Russians, one Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese carefully descended a metal ladder to a greeting from crowd of officials and journalists on Friday.
The crew will spend three days in quarantine before holding a press conference. They spoke to relatives and friends from behind a glass panel to minimize the risk of infection.
During the simulation, the crew members were under constant surveillance by scientists and communicated with their families and space officials via the Internet, which was delayed and occasionally disrupted intentionally to imitate the effects of space travel. They showered about once every 10 days — pretending to conserve water. Their food was similar to what is eaten on the International Space Station.
Midway through the mission, the crew even conducted a mock landing, venturing from their quarters in heavy space suits to trudge into a sand-covered room and plant the flags of Russia, China and the European Space Agency on a simulated Martian surface.
Scientists say that long confinement without daylight and fresh air put team members under stress as they grew increasingly tired of each other’s company.
Psychological conditions can be even more challenging on a mock mission than a real one because there would be none of the euphoria or danger of space travel.
“If anything, the make-believe nature of this exercise’s goal — a simulated Mars walk — would have made it even harder psychologically than a real mission,” said James Oberg, a space consultant and NASA veteran. “So the team’s success is even more impressive, not less so, because it was ‘only a game.’”
In an e-mail Oberg said he was particularly impressed with the crew’s ability to overcome the language barrier, but added that the absence of women in the experiment was a major flaw.
“Aside from the absence of physiological factors such as weightlessness and cosmic -radiation, the most glaring shortcoming of this exercise was the all-male composition of the crew,” he said.
The organizers said they had considered women for the experiment, but left them out for various reasons. They denied deliberately forming an all-male crew because of the failure of a similar -simulation in the past.
Russian Federal Space Agency Deputy Director Vitaly Davydov said the simulation would help to pave the way for a real Mars mission. He added that such a mission is not expected until the mid-2030s and should be done in close international cooperation.
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