14 DAY TRIAL // The six pseudo-astronauts locked behind closed doors inside a Moscow research facility are beginning to send out their first messages to the world. One such message is a journal entry released by Romain Charles, one of the team members that was selected by the European Space Agency. He is a 31-year-old engineer from France, and was selected as part of the crew after passing through rigorous tests and training sessions. In the entry he released, the “astronaut” talks about the daily life on the “spacecraft” carrying the crew to Mars.
The goal of the Mars 500 experiment is to understand the effects of long-term isolation on a crew heading for Mars. At this time, the technological obstacles that blocked even the most remote thought of a landing on the Red Planet in the past are almost gone. As such, space agencies such as ESA and RosCosmos are beginning to take research into the “human factor” very seriously, hence this endeavor. The crew is subjected to very strict routines, just as they would be in the case of a one-and-a-half-years excursion to Mars. Even a time delay has been built in the computer program managing the facility, so as to simulate the increasing distance from Earth.
“Imagine first our long and thin corridor. On one end of this corridor you have the toilets and on the other end you can find the kitchen. In between are the crew quarters. Now, if you are in the kitchen you can see the corridor on your left, the living room on your right and a connection node in front of you; beyond it is the gym. Then, think that after waking up we have something like four or five tasks to do per person before breakfast. Some activities we all have to do (urine sampling, medical check-up), other tasks are individual such as putting some music on, preparing the breakfast etc.,” Romain writes.
“And then, of course, we all wake up at slightly different times. Alexey (in room 1 near the kitchen) and Sukhrob (room 2) are always the first ones. Then, in a matter of minutes, Wang Yue (room 6), Alexander (room 3), Diego (room 5) and me (room 4) come out of our small cocoons. After waking up, there is a rush hour in our narrow corridor. It is really a bottleneck for our morning duties – if you look at the photo you should have the right picture in your mind of how it feels in the mornings,” he goes on to say. The full note can be downloaded here.