14 DAY TRIAL // A team made up of six astronauts has successfully completed a mock space mission that was carried out inside an Italian cave. The mission was organized by the European Space Agency.
The six astronauts that took part in it spent six days in a row in the Sa Grutta cave on the Italian island of Sardinia. Needless to say, the “cavenauts” lived in extreme conditions, and relied solely on each other to survive.
The European Space Agency explains that mock mission like this one are designed to familiarize astronauts with the dangers and isolation that they will surely experience when they set out to explore outer space.
While in the underground, the astronauts had to abide by a daily schedule that resembled the one in place on the International Space Station, Space reports.
Thus, they were asked to explore the cave, and collect as much information concerning its topography as possible.
“The daily routine on the [International Space] Station follows a timeline of activities largely oriented toward science experiments. In the cave, the team also followed a daily plan, working long days to push the survey forward and document knowledge of the topography of the cave,” the European Space Agency reportedly explained in a statement.
“As we extended our survey, samples were taken for later analysis of water chemistry, microbiology of soil and surfaces, and atmosphere for CO2 [carbon dioxide], temperature and humidity,” the so-called cavenauts further detailed in a blogpost.
According to the same source, the astronauts who took part in this mission were as follows: NASA's Barratt and Jack Fischer, the European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli, the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, Russian cosmonaut Aleksei Ovchinin and Japanese space flyer Satoshi Furukawa.
Interestingly enough, the Agency maintains that, all things considered, these daredevils faced greater threats inside this cave than they would in outer space.
Thus, it appears that, in case of an emergency, it would have taken more time to rescue them from the Sa Grutta cave than it would have to safely bring them home from the International Space Station.