Simulation for Mars Mission Begins in March

The test that will simulate Martian isolation conditions for several people volunteering to participate has almost reached the end of the selection phase. For now, the scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) have chosen eight candidates, but they will soon narrow it down to just six. During a recent a press release, ESA stated that the recruits are all male, between 28 and 39 years of age, and come from Belgium, Denmark, France (three persons), Germany (two of them), and Sweden.

Only six of them will be selected to participate in the 105-day long test, during which they will just live and work together, with all the activities it implies, within a sealed off lab in Moscow, Russia, mimicking the conditions of Mars missions. They will be constantly monitored during the experiment. Previous to this stage, they had been tested at the Central Clinical Hospital of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where they had been seen by a dentist, a neurologist, an ophthalmologist and a psychologist.

 

This test will record the changes in the participants' functionality related to their disposition, morale, hormonal activity and the response to the dietary supplements under the impact of the long duration of the confinement, as described in ESA's statement. Their health state, along with the financial challenges and the required technology issues will be the main concern of the experts involved in the endeavor.

 

This research, beginning next March, will precede another longer similar study, which will take place later next year and will span for a duration of 520 days. This test is the result of a collaboration between ESA's Directorate of Human Spaceflight and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP). Both ESA and NASA have individually designed mission objectives related to the first manned flight to Mars which is scheduled to take place about 30 years from now, around 2040.