A mission to …nowhere
There will be no blast-off Thursday when six men set out on a record-breaking space mission. Why? Because they'll never leave the parking lot. The ripped and ready crew of Mars500 will spend 520 days inside a sealed-up capsule in Moscow, outside the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biomedical Problems.
That's where they'll complete the first simulated human mission to Mars, a test drive that will be influential in planning future trips to the red planet. "There's never been a simulation that has lasted so long, that took place in something very similar to the actual future space capsule in which people will be going to Mars, we hope," says Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus of psychology of the University of British Columbia, who has worked with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. The historic experiment will test how the men operate in isolation, with limited company, a significant amount of stress and confinement.
The boys on board
Mars500 is made up of a six-member crew and one Russian backup. The European Space Agency chose Diego Urbina, a 27-year-old Colombian-Italian, and Frenchman Romain Charles, 31. Sukhrob Kamolov, 32, Alexey Sitev, 38, Alexandr Smoleevskiy, 33, and Mikhail Sinelnikov, 37, are all from Russia and Wang Yue, 26, will represent China.
The team was hand-picked for their experience in the space field and other technical and medical areas of expertise that will prove necessary in the capsule. Just like true space crews, Prof. Suedfeld feels this one was strategically chosen. It will also be interesting to see how cultural differences play out in the capsule, he says. "We've done research on mixed nationality space crews and what we find is they get along quite well, but they don't necessarily understand each other." Even if a person is a fluent in a learned language, he says, cultural nuances can get lost in translation and cause communication breakdowns.
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The daily grind
The men will do a lot of the same work as an astronaut at the International Space Station and will participate in more than 620 experiments (some of which involve playing video games). They'll spend 250 days doing flight tasks and experiments on their way to "Mars," then climb into a fake landing module, donning spacesuits on a simulated Mars surface roughly akin to a sandpit. After 30 days on the surface, they'll make the return trip, which takes 240 days. Because they're confined to the 550-cubic metre space, life there is designed to be as comfy as possible. There's a medical room, a greenhouse and narrow sleeping pods with cot-like beds. They'll dine on heavily pre-processed food; entrees such as beefsteak, cartons of mango juice and boxed pastries. The crew will stay in contact with the outside world via radio link, though some have promised to tweet about life in the capsule. Their day-to-day life will also be videotaped, making it a bit like a reality TV show (though it won't be broadcast - at least, not yet).
The perils of (no) space
A long sentence of confinement comes with psychological, social and physical risks, says Prof. Suedfeld. Not only could the team go stir-crazy, the monotony could drum up social tensions and make them lash out. The simulated capsule does not have windows out into the universe, which are necessary in space travel, he says, because they offer "something to wonder at, to become immersed in psychologically." (It's unclear whether the actual Mars shuttles will have windows, though Prof. Suedfeld says it's likely).
Past missions serve as cautionary tales. A 1999 experiment on the Moscow base backfired when a Russian captain forcibly kissed a female Canadian crew member. There were also reports of Russian crew getting into a drunken brawl.
Shuttle-sized expectations
If the simulation is successful, it will advance the knowledge of how humans interact with each other in space and make for much smoother missions to Mars in the future. While there are definitely going to be problems, Prof. Suedfeld predicts, most expectations are optimistic - even his. "One hopes that if they were selected properly, even though it's going to be stressful, they can cope with it," he says.
While countless proposals for a manned mission to Mars have been talked about, one could very well happen in the next 20 years. In a policy speech at the Kennedy Space Center this April, Barack Obama said "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. A landing on Mars will follow."