- 28 Feb 2005, 14:32
#1708
According to Interfax, the funding of Russia's mock Mars mission experiment, Mars-500, is to begin in March, 2005.
Russian space researchers will lock six men, possibly from different countries, in a metal tube for more than a year to see how humans will react to conditions imitating a long flight to Mars.
Space researchers and participants in the experiment will simulate a 500-day manned mission to Mars. During the 500 Days study, six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water.
A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will be allowed to quit the experiment only if they develop a severe ailment of psychological stress.
An artist's conception shows international astronauts saluting for the camera after landing on Mars. Russian researchers are planning a 500-day isolation test to prepare for such a mission.
NASA is invited
Experiment participation is not solely reserved for Russian volunteers, institute officials added.
"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006," Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy director for science at the institute, told Russia's Interfax news agency during a recent Russian-American working group meeting in Moscow.
NASA has been invited by Russian scientists to join in on the Mars mock mission, but a final decision by the U.S. space agency is pending, Guy Fogleman, NASA director of the Office of Biological and Physical Research's Bioastronautics Research Division, told Russian reporters.
The space agency has not yet decided whether it will participate, though a decision is anticipated sometime in the next few months, Beasley added.
NASA astronauts currently serve six-month missions aboard the international space station, though Russian flight controllers have lobbied to increase joint U.S.-Russian missions up to one year in duration.
"Any medical and biological experiments made on board the international space station aim at long-distance space flights of the future," Ilyin said.
Who holds the record?
The U.S. single spaceflight endurance record falls on the space station's Expedition 4 crew, Carl Walz and Dan Bursch, who lived in orbit for a total of 196 days.
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, a medical doctor, set the current world record for the longest continuous spaceflight when he spent 438 days aboard Russia's Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.
Polyakov told Interfax reporters that the 500 Days experiment will not include female volunteers.
Get ready for the famous equality argument to begin... ladies?
Source Credits: Physorg, MSNBC News.
Russian space researchers will lock six men, possibly from different countries, in a metal tube for more than a year to see how humans will react to conditions imitating a long flight to Mars.
Space researchers and participants in the experiment will simulate a 500-day manned mission to Mars. During the 500 Days study, six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water.
A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will be allowed to quit the experiment only if they develop a severe ailment of psychological stress.
An artist's conception shows international astronauts saluting for the camera after landing on Mars. Russian researchers are planning a 500-day isolation test to prepare for such a mission.
NASA is invited
Experiment participation is not solely reserved for Russian volunteers, institute officials added.
"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006," Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy director for science at the institute, told Russia's Interfax news agency during a recent Russian-American working group meeting in Moscow.
NASA has been invited by Russian scientists to join in on the Mars mock mission, but a final decision by the U.S. space agency is pending, Guy Fogleman, NASA director of the Office of Biological and Physical Research's Bioastronautics Research Division, told Russian reporters.
The space agency has not yet decided whether it will participate, though a decision is anticipated sometime in the next few months, Beasley added.
NASA astronauts currently serve six-month missions aboard the international space station, though Russian flight controllers have lobbied to increase joint U.S.-Russian missions up to one year in duration.
"Any medical and biological experiments made on board the international space station aim at long-distance space flights of the future," Ilyin said.
Who holds the record?
The U.S. single spaceflight endurance record falls on the space station's Expedition 4 crew, Carl Walz and Dan Bursch, who lived in orbit for a total of 196 days.
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, a medical doctor, set the current world record for the longest continuous spaceflight when he spent 438 days aboard Russia's Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.
Polyakov told Interfax reporters that the 500 Days experiment will not include female volunteers.
Get ready for the famous equality argument to begin... ladies?
Source Credits: Physorg, MSNBC News.
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- By Fatema.Khimji