14 DAY TRIAL // The Mars 500 experiment is set to begin, Russian authorities in charge of the project have recently announced. The six volunteers, who will be locked together in a mock-up of a future Mars-bound spacecraft, will remain in complete isolation for more than three months, during which time they will live the life destined to any Earth-based crew on their way to the Red Planet. If the experiment is successful, then another one, lasting 528 days, will also be conducted, aiming to faithfully simulate the conditions of a one-way trip to Mars.
In addition to having to remain confined to a place with no outside air sources and no windows for three months, the six-member crew, selected from countries participating in the experiment, will also have to spend most of their time with electrodes attached to their skin. Communication with the outside world will be simulated as if they were already on Mars, and a 10-minute delay will be added to all channels. In other words, they will have to wait 20 minutes when speaking with the “Mission Control,” before the answer returns (10 minutes one way, 10 minutes when the signal returns).
Despite the fact that each of the “astronauts” will receive as much as $6,500 per month over the duration of the experiment, they will have little comfort in their ship. Only a few modern utilities have been added to the bare pine wood walls, mimicking the conditions that will most likely be met in a future Mars mission. However, a large plasma TV, a stow and a fridge will be present on the mock-up ship, which will be home to these people for three months.
Human limitation is the main thing that drags a future Mars mission back. That is to say, it's not technology that prevents us from reaching the Red Planet, but our own mind. And one of the most important goals of the new experiment is to assess the impact of such a long-time isolation on the human mind, and if and how claustrophobia occurs with the crew. Each of the participants will try to take as much care of the others as possible, as if a single one quits, then the entire experiment will be lost.
“It's a real probability that a flight to Mars would fail if the very serious problem of isolation is not investigated first. The impact of the isolation would almost certainly kill the crew on board,” German army engineer Oliver Knickel, one of the fake astronauts in the Mars 500 experiment, said. “It definitely will not be fun. Each test subject has the right to go out at any moment, but of course it will influence the whole experiment. So we will try to support him and make life for him better. Each crew member understands that it's our goal to go all the way,” the commander of the “mission,” Sergei Ryazansky, added.