MARS-500
The MARS-500 mission was a psychosocial isolation experiment conducted between 2007 and 2011 by Russia, the European Space Agency, and China, in preparation for an unspecified future crewed spaceflight to the planet Mars.
[1] The experiment's facility was located at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow, Russia.
The final stage of the experiment, which was intended to simulate a 520-day crewed mission, was conducted by an all-male crew consisting of three Russians (Alexey Sitev, Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexander Smoleevskij), a Frenchman (Romain Charles), an Italian (Diego Urbina), and a Chinese citizen (Yue Wang).
The experiment yielded important data on the physiological, social, and psychological effects of long-term, close-quarters isolation.
MARS-500's communication systems were designed with an average delay of 13 min, to simulate the actual transmission time to and from a Mars-bound spacecraft.
[citation needed] The purpose of this stage was to test the technical equipment, facilities, and operating procedures for the voyage.
The 520-day final stage of the experiment, which was intended to simulate a full-length crewed mission, began on 3 June 2010 and ended on 4 November 2011.
The individual bedroom compartments, which had an area around 3 m2 (32 sq ft) each, contained a bed, a desk, a chair, and shelves for personal belongings.
[17] The mission started on 3 June 2010[25] and concluded on 4 November 2011, whereupon the participants entered a four-day quarantine before leaving the facility.
To study this phenomenon, IBMP has been conducting research in this area for many years, which has allowed construction of a detailed picture of the cause of hypokinetic disorders.
Experimental results show the main cause of violations to be a change in the gravity-dependent mechanisms that are responsible for motoric activity under the influence of gravity on the body.
[27][jargon] The main purpose of immersion experiments was to study potential effects of the flight (including unloading) on the support mechanisms of the body (spinal, supraspinal), on the state of the central nervous systems, and on motor function and hand-eye co-ordination.
The use of argon can significantly reduce the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere of a spacecraft without any harm to the crew and to create a so-called hypoxic environment.
[29] To avoid health problems caused by irradiation during the flight to Mars, creating a prediction model of radiation risk is needed.
Radiological experiments are then conducted to study the radiobiological reactions of the main regulatory body systems (nervous, endocrine, immune, cardiovascular, hematopoietic), and spermatozoa and cytogenetic response to irradiation and analysis of long-term effects of exposure (life expectancy and carcinogenesis).
The experiments were designed so that they mimic the real exposure of crew during the flight to Mars, including acute and chronic phases of disease.
No language, social, or cultural barriers were observed, and the mission commander exercised his authority as both a formal and informal leader.
One crew member slept very badly, suffered chronic sleep deprivation, and accounted for the majority of mistakes made on a computer test used to measure concentration and alertness.
