ESA CAVES

The first two weeks focus on providing the astronauts with the necessary behavioural patterns, scientific knowledge, and technical skills to work effectively and safely in an underground environment.

It recreates on Earth many of the stressful conditions and specific characteristics encountered in long duration spaceflight, such as: Another parallel with space exploration concerns astronaut progression within the cave, i.e., how they move through the environment.

The crew mission performed during the final expedition also has several elements in common with astronaut's experience during ISS operations, including a time-lined activities schedule, daily planning calls to the ground support team, and standardised procedures and data collection methods.

[2] In the same way astronauts in space spend a considerable part of their time doing science, “cavenauts” must perform a real crew mission involving several different experiments and activities while exploring the cave.

[2] Geology (analysis of water's chemical and physical properties, counting of drip rate) Environment (measurement of air temperature / relative humidity / wind / air pressure / CO2 concentration / radon concentration)Microbiology (sampling of micro-organisms in soil and on surfaces for later cultivation) Biology (counting and sampling of cave terrestrial and aquatic fauna, search for micro-crustaceans, search for fauna in the soil) Technology testing (underground communication devices, physiology sensors) Cave documentation (photos and 3D survey of the cave, photogrammetry modeling of relevant speleothems) One of the most remarkable scientific results is the discovery of a previously unknown species of crustaceans of the genus Alpioniscus living in the cave.