18-month Mars500 mission has begun

[wautd]

ESA

3 June 2010
Mars500, the first full-length simulated mission to Mars, started today in Moscow at 13:49 local time (11:49 CET), when the six-man crew entered their ‘spacecraft’ and the hatch was closed. The experiment will run until November next year.

The mood was serious and very determined in the Mars500 facility at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow this afternoon, as the crew talked to the press and then walked into the modules that will be their home for the next 520 days.

Diego Urbina and Romain Charles from Europe, Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexey Sitev, Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Mikhail Sinelnikov from Russia and Wang Yue from China face a mission that is as close as possible to a real space voyage without leaving the ground. They will live and work like astronauts, eat special food and exercise in the same way as crews aboard the International Space Station.

Their mission is to ‘fly to Mars’ in 250 days, ‘land on and explore Mars’ for a month and ‘return to Earth’ in 230 days, using their imitation interplanetary spacecraft, lander and martian surface.

The hatch will remain closed until November 2011 and the crew must manage using the food and equipment stored in the facility. Only electricity, water and some air will be fed into the compartments from outside.

Problems ahead

In addition to testing many novel technologies, Mars500 is an extreme test of human endurance. Staying almost 18 months inside the metallic containers will be hard, even after being trained and briefed by astronauts and submariners.

The crew will no doubt have their ups and downs during the long mission, and these psychological changes are a key part of the experiment.

The ‘astronauts’ will normally divide their weekdays equally between work, free time and rest, with the weekends usually free. They have taken plenty of films, books, games, musical instruments and entertainment with them.

Their bodies will start to adapt to the new conditions – a closed environment with restricted space can quickly lead to poor physical condition. The crew need to exercise up to two hours a day, but they can shower only once a week.

What have I forgotten? Preparing everything from soap and clothing to food and spare camera batteries for a self-contained 18-month mission is a critical and complex task.

And finally the technology: the facility is not a spacecraft, but it uses many systems that will be found on a real Mars craft. Testing these in realistic conditions is important. The crew have been trained to repair every single bolt of their ‘craft’ and outside help will be given only in extreme situations.

See you in 520 days – or today @esa.int

Throughout their mission, Diego Urbina and Romain Charles, the ESA crewmembers, will send diary updates and videos to ESA’s Mars500 site. The first diary entry has been published today: “Goodbye Sun, goodbye Earth, we are leaving for Mars!”.

Interesting to know how they will react after such long period of solitude.

[Chris OFarrell]

Damn it, we need to build faster ships.

Thats just too damn long for a trip to Mars. Where the hell are my Nuke powered spacecraft that I was promised as a kid???

[Temujin]

Damn it, we need to build faster ships.

Thats just too damn long for a trip to Mars. Where the hell are my Nuke powered spacecraft that I was promised as a kid???

Indeed, 250 days one way. Hell VASIMR is estimated at taking 39 days, and I've heard that Orion could theoretically cut that down to two weeks or less.

[Stark]

The fictional destination is irrelevant to the experiment. Its observing and testing (within the limits of their primitive simulation anyway) how crazy these people will go and what can be done.

[Temujin]

The fictional destination is irrelevant to the experiment. Its observing and testing (within the limits of their primitive simulation anyway) how crazy these people will go and what can be done.

True. Even with an advanced drive we'll still going to want to go further, and that of course will take longer. And of course whether your on a ship, station, or based on body besides Earth, living conditions are going to remain exceptionally cramped and spartan. The more we understand how people can handle those kinds of conditions for extended periods of time the better.

[Stark]

Yeah, and it's not a physical or technical experiment because there's gravity and outside supplies. It's like that 80s thing where they put people in a geodesic for a year.

[Alyeska]

I wonder if they are going to restrict communication to the outside world to mirror how it would be on the ship? Increasing time delays between communication so real time communication does not exist.

[Twoyboy]

I wonder if they are going to restrict communication to the outside world to mirror how it would be on the ship? Increasing time delays between communication so real time communication does not exist.

They are.

The crew will have no access to telephones, television or any other modern luxuries, and will be able to communicate with the experiment's control room only by emails, which will have a gradually increasing time delay as the "journey" goes on and the craft "moves" further from Earth.

Source

[Alyeska]

Restricting to email seems a little harsh. Voice communication isn't all that bandwidth intensive. Though if they have email, I wonder how clever they will get in trying to use it. Attached audio and video files.

[Stark]

Yeah, because it'll be a direct link, right?

[loomer]

So this is pretty cool - the Russian Academy of Sciences is doing a test to see if we could go to mars without a spaceship's crew going insane thanks to the sheer length of the trip and the limited space. They're 'sending' 6 people from different countries to Mars in a simulated spacecraft. They've done basic tests before - one went a few days and was just testing technical things, the last went for 105 days to see how people would handle the enclosed spaces in a prolonged period of time.

They started this two days ago. They get to live in a 'ship' with a total volume of 550 square metres - and they can only use around a fifth of that for habitation unless they start living in the medical module or the storage module. One of them though simulates the Martian surface and another is a lander, so no go on using them like that. They're even including a simulated communications lag.

Mars500: Just like the real thing?

By Richard Galpin BBC News, Moscow

There was all the pageantry of a real space launch.

The six "astronauts" wearing bright blue jump-suits and even surgical masks, were paraded before banks of television cameras and hordes of journalists at a news conference before entering their mock spaceship.

Amongst the long rows of VIPs at the news conference were senior officials from the United States, China and the European Union.

If, as some experts believe, the main aim of the Mars 500 experiment is to publicise the concept of human flight to the red planet, then it has surely succeeded beyond all expectations.

"I am very happy to be part of this project," said Diego Urbina, the Colombian-Italian and most extrovert member of the crew.

"It will raise awareness of space flight so hopefully a few years from now there will be a real flight to Mars."

He confessed that Elton John had been his inspiration.

"I don't know if you know that song Rocket Man," he asked.

"I want a future like that… where people will be going frequently into space and will be working there and it will be very usual."

In front of the world's media, all the team spoke confidently about the chances of the experiment being successful - in other words that noone would crack under the stress of such lengthy confinement in such claustrophobic and bizarre conditions and demand to be let out.

"The target is for all six of us to be here for 520 days," said the French crew-member Romain Charles who took a guitar with him into the cluster of brown and silver-coloured metal tubes which will be home until November 2011.

After the news conference, the six crew disappeared, re-emerging an hour later by the entrance hatch to the mock spaceship, where they put on another high-spirited performance for the media.

Finally, blowing kisses and waving to wives, girlfriends and relatives, they walked up the steps and through the entrance hatch.

A solemn-faced official slowly closed and sealed it behind them.

So now reality bites for the six-member volunteer crew.

What will they be thinking as they sit inside their tin cans in north-west Moscow where outside the warm sun shines and the flowers blossom?

There is no thrill of a blast-off and flight through space.

There are no windows from which to watch the Earth gradually shrink away.

And no anticipation of reaching a new world more than fifty million kilometres away.

Instead, silent inertia, stale air and tinned food.

And everywhere cameras watching their every move, looking out for signs of mental collapse.

They have just one thing to cling on to, that they are playing their part in the history of space exploration.

That their success in this experiment will mean a human flight to Mars is a step closer.

And space experts already believe the first flight could be just 25 years away or even less if there is the political and economic will from countries with advanced space programmes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_ ... 233293.stm

[Big Phil]

Six dudes, crammed together for 18 months. I hope these are low testosterone wussies, otherwise they'll quickly be:

1. Resorting to sodomy OR
2. Starting fights, ending with somebody getting the shit kicked out of them

[Sea Skimmer]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=142895

Already posted, and at the top of this forum no less

[The Romulan Republic]

Six dudes, crammed together for 18 months. I hope these are low testosterone wussies, otherwise they'll quickly be:

1. Resorting to sodomy OR
2. Starting fights, ending with somebody getting the shit kicked out of them

Isn't that part of the point of the experiment, to see weather humans can go that long without starting that kind of shit?

[Serafina]

Of course it is.
But really - that's hardly an insurmountable obstacle. Well-trained intelligent people with sufficient distraction (as giving mission reports, repairing parts of the spaceship etc.) should have no problems with that.

[Alyeska]

Yeah, because it'll be a direct link, right?

Voice transmission can be set as specific bit rates in order to maximize bandwidth. I just wonder what sort of power the space craft would need to make voice transmissions at range.

[wautd]

Six dudes, crammed together for 18 months.
2. Starting fights, ending with somebody getting the shit kicked out of them

Heh... compared to 6 girls toghether it probably won't be that bad

I think the homesickness will be harder than living with 5 other guys. In real space, you know you're there for the end of the trip, so you have to make the best of it, or for worse. While with
this experiment, you'll always realize that when things go really bad, earth will still be right outside and I think that makes it harder to cope.

[Gil Hamilton]

Six dudes, crammed together for 18 months. I hope these are low testosterone wussies, otherwise they'll quickly be:

1. Resorting to sodomy OR
2. Starting fights, ending with somebody getting the shit kicked out of them

Or they'll work together and deal with it. It depends on the men and not all men that gew crammed together are wusses or eventual buggers/brawlers. Look at any submarine crew.

Though it is true that women handle this better than men. I think it was the French who put a mission in Antarctica with an all female crew for a similar length of time as this and they performed excellently.

[loomer]

Whoops. Late at night I'm half blind, sorry.

[Cykeisme]

Perhaps they should have had an all-female crew.

Iunno.. six women, six months, zero gee, nothing around for a million miles... the pay-per-view subscription feels alone could significantly offset the cost of the mission.

[Junghalli]

The isolation here seems roughly comparable to long-distance sailing ships a few centuries ago. If anything conditions are probably in most respects a good deal better here than they were on those ships (more technological creature comforts, better available medicine, better food, maybe less crowding, they can talk to home even if not in real-time). Voyage time in this case might be longer though (I'm honestly too lazy to look it up right now).

It's definitely nice to see an experiment like this being done; it can't hurt to have experience with this kind of thing when we actually undertake such a mission.

[Serafina]

If anything, the travel time is not significantly longer.
Columbus took about 8 months to reach America (IIRC). Longer sea travels were nothing extraordinary later on.
While this might be longer, if you can mange a year you should manage 18 months.

If anything, the lack of strict discipline and the fact that they are fewer in number would matter more than that.
But then again, these are the best of the best, not some ragtag sailers, and smaller numbers can also be advantageous.
So i really would not worry about infightint or anything, nor about severe psychological problems. Polar researches can do it, too, albeit only for ~6 months.

[Alyeska]

Previous ocean voyages had crews larger than 6 men.

[Lief]

I fail to really see the point in this experiment for a couple of reasons.

This has been done before. (biosphere experiment + others)

This is being done every day at various locations. (submarines + artic /antarctic locations)

What they are trying to discover is already known? Isn't it?

edit: spelling

[Serafina]

Previous ocean voyages had crews larger than 6 men.

Which i mentioned in the very same post...

I fail to really see the point in this experiment for a couple of reasons.

Pulicity is one.
Doing it in a controlled enviroment is another.

This has been done before. (biosphere experiment + others)

Good experimentation means that you do it more than once.

This is being done every day at various locations. (submarines + artic /antarctic locations)

While similar, these are still different and not under controlled conditions.

What they are trying to discover is already known? Isn't it?

Sure.
But for such a project, you can't be sure enough. Doing the experiment now is far better than not doing it and overlooking something.