Free Republic

While the moon is the main goal of NASA's Artemis program, the agency's larger goal is to send crewed missions to Mars. But long-term space travel and habitation won't be easy. Such missions will present both physical and mental challenges as astronauts work to not only survive, but perform important scientific research in uniquely difficult environments. In the upcoming NASA-Russia experiment, which builds on a previous four-month-long study from 2019, a crew will live in isolation in a closed facility at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems, which is in Moscow, NASA officials said in a statement. This habitat facility was...

Mars-500” project is being conducted by the State scientific center of the Russian Federation – Institute for Bio-Medical Problems of RAS under the aegis of Roscosmos and Russian Academy of Sciences. It includes a series of experiments simulating these or those aspects of an interplanetary manned flight. The main part is a series of experiments on long-term isolation of the crew in conditions of the specially built ground-based experiment facility.

MOSCOW — A group of volunteers have started final training in Russia in preparation for being locked up in a capsule for 520 days to simulate the psychological effects of the voyage to Mars. Three Russians, two other Europeans and one Chinese national will be shut away for one-and-a-half years inside the 180-square-metre (1,000-square-feet) module on the outskirts of Moscow starting late May or early June. The project, the first full-duration simulated mission to Mars, follows a similar experiment at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) last year which saw six volunteers shut away for a mere 105 days....