A.S.I. - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana - The road to Space goes through Italy.

13 Jul 2009

The adventure has finished. After 105 days isolated in a chamber only a few square metres in size, the six volunteers who participated in the first simulation of a manned mission to Mars have (virtually) returned to Earth. The ‘spacecraft’ was positioned at the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow and at 2.00 p.m. local time the hatch opened. The six participants, wearing the dark blue overalls of the European Space Agency (ESA), came out smiling and were met by loud applause.

For over three months, since 31 March to be precise, the participants in the experiment - four Russians (the cosmonaut in command Sergei Ryazansky, the doctors Oleg Artemyez and Alexei Baranov, and the sport psychologist Alexei Shpakov) along with the German mechanical engineer Oliver Knickel and the French civilian pilot Cyrille Fournier - lived shoulder to shoulder locked inside the chamber as if they really were voyaging directly towards the Red Planet.

 
The mission, sponsored by Roscomos (the Russian Federal Space Agency) and the European Space Agency, aimed to study the psychological and medical problems of long missions in space. The important stages of a mission to Mars were reproduced; from launch to the actual voyage, until arrival and transfer to a base on the Martian surface, and finally re-entry to Earth. Over 70 experiments were conducted ‘in flight’, including four that were proposed by the Italian Space Agency.
The tests to overcome were primarily psychological. “Missions on the International Space Station cannot provide the same information, even if they are long,” said Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight, “because emergencies can be managed by a rapid re-entry to Earth.” The crew on a voyage to Mars must be self-sufficient, with a doctor on board, and aware that they cannot be reached quickly.

 
During the three months the participants, selected from over five hundred candidates, did not have contact with the outside world with the exception of mission control. There was a communication time delay of about twenty minutes to simulate communication with the Earth from space. The internet, mobile phones and other means of communication, including the radio, were prohibited. It is a test without precedent.  “One hundred consecutive days in orbit is a recognised limit, like the 30 kilometre wall in a marathon: if you go over it, then you shouldn’t have any problems,” comments the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who was in Moscow to greet the six volunteers on the Mars500 experiment.

 
“As strange as it seems, time flies here. We have the sensation of having entered the module only two or three weeks ago,” the participants recounted. The crew on the mission to Mars spent artificial days without daylight or nights but only divided by work shifts and lunch and dinner times. The perception of time is only one of the psychological tests that they faced. The typical day started at 8 or earlier with medical tests: measurements of temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and weight. The data were immediately transmitted to the doctor on duty. A quick breakfast and then they all followed their respective experiments, arranged by research centres across Europe, Russia and the USA. The Italian tests were sponsored by the Italian National Research Council to measure the level of psychological stress using an electroencephalogram.

 
The international team of scientists is processing the data gathered in the three months, and in anticipation of the results phase two of the Mars500 experiment is already being planned. In fact, with current technology, a mission to Mars should last about two years. Given this, the ESA intends to organise a second, longer mission lasting 520 days, the actual predicted duration of a return trip to Mars including time spent on the planet. The second phase could commence at the end of the year or at the start of 2010.