Volunteers Complete 105-Day Isolation Mission In Mars Study
Six members of a volunteer crew completed the task of staying locked within an isolated chamber for 105 days in an effort to further understand the implications of a human mission to Mars.
The mission began on March 31, when members of the volunteer team from Russia and Europe entered the 19,500-cubic-feet chamber located at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP).
The isolation project is the first by the ESA and IBMP aimed at simulating the conditions astronauts will face in future missions to the red planet, including a communication delay of 20 minutes both ways during simulated emergencies.
The mission is part of the Mars500 program that hopes to gain insight on the psychological and medical aspects of long distance spaceflights.
“We have successfully completed our mission,” said Oliver Knickel, a mechanical engineer in the German army who volunteered with the program.
“This is a big accomplishment that I am very proud of. I hope that the scientific data we have provided over the last months will help to make a mission to Mars possible.”
Knickel was joined by ESA crewmember Cyrille Fournier, an airline pilot from France, as well as Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryazansky and Oleg Artemyev. Russians Alexei Baranov, a medical doctor, and Alexei Shpakov, a sports physiologist were also part of the experiment.
“We had an outstanding team spirit throughout the entire 105 days,” said Cyrille Fournier. “Living for that long in a confined environment can only work if the crew is really getting along with each other. The crew is the crucial key to mission success, which became very evident to me during the 105 days.”
The 105-day project will be followed by a 520-day study in 2010. During the longer study, crewmembers will be sealed in the same chamber for 520 days in order to replicate an entire mission to and from Mars, which lies between 34 million miles and more than 250 million miles from Earth.
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Image Caption: Mars500 crew passes the halfway point in their 105-day Mars mission simulation. Credits: ESA
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