The main experiment of Mars-500, a project designed to simulate a manned flight to Mars, entered its second phase as it passed the halfway mark in its 520-day total duration. This is the second experiment undertaken by Moscow’s Institute for Bio-Medical Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of the project. The first experiment, a 105-day isolation, ended on July 14, 2009.
The six participants in the first experiment – including four Russian, one French, and one German crew members – spent more than three months in isolation. The experiment intended to monitor the crew members’ physiological and psychological adaptation to living and working in isolation, study their interaction with the flight control center once e-mail and radio became the only means of communication, and test life support systems and research equipment.
2/9
© Photo : State Research Center – Institute for Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Science
The participants did not receive any additional resources and were forced to live on what was loaded into the ‘ship’ at the beginning of the flight. The crew themselves made all the decisions and addressed various accidents such as failures in control systems or gym machines, the loss of pressurization, and so on.
The accommodation module resembles a luxury railroad car decorated with wooden panels.
4/9
© Photo : State Research Center – Institute for Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Science
Sixteen cameras kept the ‘marsonauts’ under close, round-the-clock surveillance. They could only be unmonitored in their individual compartments.
On June 3, 2010, the 520-day isolation experiment of the Mars-500 project kicked off. The crew includes seven members: Russian commander Alexei Sitev, physician Sukhrob Kamolov, and researcher Alexander Smoleyevsky, French flight engineer Romain Charles, Italian researcher Diego Urbina, and Chinese researcher Wang Yue.
The experiment comprises three main phases: a 250-day ‘flight’ to the Red Planet, a 30-day stay on Mars, and a 240-day return to the Earth.
7/9
© Photo : State Research Center – Institute for Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Science
/ In April 2010, the crew members were tested for psychological compatibility. In the Paraflighter test bench, they were taught to interact with each other, predicting their partners’ actions, planning, and coming to an agreement.
In May 2010, the Mars-500 crew played chess with former world champion Anatoly Karpov. Project organizers believe the ‘marsonauts’ have to be able to make rapid decisions in critical situations.
On February 14, Alexander Smoleyevsky and Diego Urbina took the crew’s first ‘Marswalk,’ successfully accomplishing all tasks 50 minutes ahead of schedule. They dedicated their ‘Marswalk’ to the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight, which will be celebrated this April.
