Inside the isolation experiment for astronauts
AFTER A YEAR LIVING ON A HAWAIIAN VOLCANO TO SIMULATE LIFE ON MARS, SIX ASTRONAUTS ARE ABOUT TO EMERGE TOMORROW. KARIN GOODWIN REPORTS
IS there life on Mars? It’s a question that has plagued us for centuries. Now, however, thanks to a mission that simulates the human experience of surviving on the Red Planet – due to finish today – the dream of sending astronauts to Mars has moved one step closer. As part of the HI-SEAS Nasa-funded simulated mission to Mars six volunteer scientists have spent the last year in a specially-constructed dome on a Hawaiian volcano to help explore the “human factors” identified as risks to success of a real mission. Would we go mad during the journey, or on the planet? Might loneliness affect us so much we couldn’t carry out the mission? Would falling in love be dangerous? Or falling out of love?
Food in the 93sqm dome has been dried or canned, and communication with “Mission Control” is delayed by 20 minutes, the length it would take to relay messages from Mars in order to more closely ape the psychological conditions of living and working millions of miles from home.
At 8,200 feet above sea level, the landscape around Mauna Loa mimics Martian soil and scientists have only been allowed outside to explore it as part of “simulated spacewalks” wearing spacesuits and helmets.
The aim of the mission, the longest of a series headed by the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is to study the human and psychological factors essential to the success of any human exploration of Mars, which would last about three years.
Data about how the crew bonded, interacted and worked together will be analysed and help inform a planned future mission, due to start in January, looking at which character traits best complement each other in the perfect space team.
Kim Binsted, principal investigator of the study, told the Sunday Herald that the year-long project had produced “a huge volume of data” to be analysed in coming months. Yesterday she was preparing a feast of fresh fruit to reward volunteers for their 365-day commitment to science.
“Nasa funded this project because we need to look at how crew cohesion can effect performance,” she explained. “Astronauts tend to be very stoic people and if you ask them how they are doing, they will say, ‘fine’. So we have to find other ways of detecting issues.
“For example, volunteers all wear sociometric badges, like in Star Trek, and they will record things like voice volume and distance. If we detect raised voices, or if two badges never come close to each other, it might suggest there is a problem and we can think about ways to deal with that. Successful human interaction is just as important as having the right technology.”
Last September, new findings from Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provided the strongest evidence yet that water still flows intermittently on Mars, raising hopes about finding microscopic life.
However, scientists claim finding signs of life through robotic exploration alone is very challenging. Evidence of Martian lifeforms are likely to have been locked away in rocks for billions of years, making it difficult to detect.
“There are two alternative ways to explore Mars that will help to overcome this difficulty,” said Dr Claire Cousins, of St Andrews University’s Earth and Environmental Sciences department.
“One way is to bring bits of Mars back to Earth via robotic sample-return missions, so we can study them back in laboratories on Earth. The second way is to send humans to Mars, so they can use more complicated equipment on Mars itself, as well as benefit from the far better decision-making capability of people vs robotic rovers.”
Cousins, who is also involved in Nasa-funded Mars research, said human exploration of the planet was expected within the next decade or so.
“Since landing on the Moon, Mars has been the next frontier in human space exploration, and we’re getting closer to achieving this every day,” she added. “Missions that simulate what it would be like for a small crew of people to explore Mars help us understand not just how to carry out cool science, but importantly how people can cope under the psychological pressure of a very confined environment, with just the same few people to interact with.”
The Hawaiian mission is just one of a series of projects working to solve the problems of how to best support healthy human interaction in space. Last year, Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year on the International Space Station with Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, which tested a range of human factors including physical, behavioural and psychological ones.
Films from Stanley Kubrick’s cult classic 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe’s bestseller, have dealt with the horror of psychological breakdown in space.
In real life, meanwhile, mental health has been identified as one of the major limiting factors for astronauts. Many report frequent hallucinations – while some are seen as visual disturbances, others have been associated with the breakdown of crew coherence and space mission stress.
In 1976, crew from the Russian Soyuz-21 mission were brought back to Earth early after they reported an acrid smell aboard the Salyut-5 space station, though “interpersonal issues” and “psychological problems” later led Nasa to conclude the odour was probably a hallucination.