A four member astronauts crew have begun a 45-day travel mission to one of Mars’ moon, Phobos.
The crew is not yet travelling to Mars, but are readying the ground for such trips in the future. All four of them are part of a study that is in-charge of simulating isolation and confinement in exploration scenarios. This will help them to understand the effects of long-duration space travel on the human body.
The four member crew include Jared Broddrick, Pietro Di Tillio, Dragos Michael Popescu, and Patrick Ridgley. During this 45 days mission, the crew will face the isolation, confinement, and time delays of a long space mission. As well as conduct some science experiments over their.
The mission is scheduled to complete on March 14.
The mission is part of the Hera campaign, an analogue mission that prepares astronauts, engineers and teams on the ground for near-term and future exploration to asteroids, Mars, and the Moon. According to NASA, Hera mission include field tests that are planned to conduct in locations that have physical similarities to the extreme space environments.
The Hera missions include testing new technologies, robotic equipment, vehicles, habitats, communications, power generation, mobility, infrastructure, and storage. Other than that, they intend to observe behavioural effects such as isolation and confinement, team dynamics, menu fatigue, and others.
During the 45-day simulated trip, the crew will experience increasing delays in communicating with the outside world, said NASA. After the crew reaches Phobos, this delay will last up to five minutes each way, the organisation stated. Such delays are supposed to force the crew and those coordinating their journey to practice minimal communication that will reduce the impacts to the mission’s operations.
In this mission, the scientist will conduct 15 studies with seven returning investigations and eight new ones. NASA claims that the data collected during these missions will continue to help prepare humans for Artemis exploration missions to the Moon, trips to the planned lunar Gateway outpost, and long-duration missions to Mars.
Earlier, Brandon Vessey, research operations and integration element scientist, said that in this HERA campaign, they’re learning more about how teams function in an autonomous environment where they have limited contact with Earth.
This simulation is the second mission of Hera’s Campaign 6.Mission 1 ended on November 15, 2021. Two more missions will follow as part of the campaign, with the final simulated mission set to end by September 12, 2022.
Ms Kalinga