The plans of mankind are to send the first expedition to Mars in the foreseeable future. Experiments with training "marsonauts" have been going on for a long time and differ in many ways from the training of ordinary astronauts.
Long-term isolation
The largest experimental exercise in isolating a potential expedition participant was carried out at the Russian Biomedical Agency, where for 520 days a crew of three Russians, an Italian, a Frenchman and a Chinese was closed from the outside world in a closed room that mimics a "marsolet". During imprisonment, various flight situations were reproduced, but the main test was still the isolation itself. After the expiration of the period for which no conflicts and tensions in the relationship were noticed, all members of the experimental training felt optimal. However, in 2013, the American magazine "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" published an article about how the "Marsonauts" felt later. It turned out that four out of six had severe sleep problems.some avoided any physical exercise or any social activity, like hibernating animals. In addition, the natural or, as scientists say, the circadian rhythm of the autonomic nervous system was severely disrupted.
Normoxic environment
The task of scientists is to reduce the amount of oxygen in the spacecraft in order to avoid any risk of fire - to create a fire safe environment. To do this, it is necessary to reduce the oxygen level from almost 21% under normal conditions to 10%, but a person cannot stay in such an environment for a long time. Scientists decided to replace oxygen with argon. Experiments on people were carried out at the Institute of Biomedical Problems. The subjects lived for 18 days in the so-called normoxic environment, when the pressure was 5 meters of water column, oxygen was 10%, and the rest was a nitrogen-argon mixture. At the same time, there were no violations of mental and physical activity. During the experiments, it was found that a mixture of 14% oxygen, 53 - nitrogen and 33 - argon - is safe for a long flight. Now more serious and prolonged training of people is needed to adapt to this environment.
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Cultural differences in communication
The tension of interpersonal relations, social maladjustment, etc. quite likely during such a mission. Psychologists proceeded from the fact that these phenomena are aggravated by cultural differences. And in this regard, non-verbal communication is of particular importance - intonation, gestures, facial expression, eye contact, posture, distance during communication. The norms of such communication are very different in different cultures, which poses a threat, given that non-verbal information often plays a more important role than verbal information. Anthropologist Berduisl believes that 65% of information is transmitted through non-verbal communication, and Albert Mehrabyan experimentally proved that the overall effect of communication can be reduced to the following formula: 7% - speech + 38% - intonation and tone + 55% - facial expressions and body movements.
Long battery life
The specificity of a space flight to Mars is the possibility of a complete loss of communication between the spacecraft and the MCC. Therefore, an important part of the training is the observation of the completely independent work of the crew. In particular, during the Mars 500 project, abnormal situations with a weekly loss of communication were simulated. The crew at that time made up the daily routine in terms of the necessary work and experiments, he himself led the Mars 500 program.
Salad machine
Participants in future flights will have to master and develop onboard feeding devices. In particular, the vitamin greenhouse, which was used by the participants of the Mars 500 project. In a small cylindrical chamber, the participants of the experiment grew Chinese salad
cabbage, varieties "Vesnyanka". Potential astronauts launched this unit already at the end of the simulated expedition. And what did they get? On the leaves of the undersized lettuce, there were everywhere necrotic spots of a non-infectious nature, colonies of saprophytic microflora, etc. The cosmonauts had to improve the conditions for growing lettuce and concluded that it was necessary to isolate the greenhouse from the effects of the atmosphere of the training module. So training astronauts as nerds on a flight to Mars is extremely important.
Landing on the surface
This was a very important part of the experiment using a specially designed module to simulate the surface of Mars. The experiment consisted of a simulated descent of groups of astronauts to the planet. According to scientists, training in virtual reality of the planet is very important for marsonauts. Even in seemingly artificial conditions, it is possible to work out and study interaction taking into account behavioral patterns and professional activities. The crew members launched rovers across Mars, took samples, and even simulated emergency situations associated, for example, with accidents. In general, virtual modeling of the cosmonaut's work is very important for training, no matter how theatrical it may seem from the outside.
Special psychological trainings
Psychologists are now seriously wondering about the behavior of the so-called "traveling psyche". In particular, Oleg Bazaluk, Ph. D., writes: “A long space flight will bring to the fore the problem of the relationship between the organism (body) and the psyche. From the tendencies in the development of relations between the body and the psyche, observed in the conditions of the Earth's noosphere, we can make the following forecast - in the conditions of a long space flight, the traveling psyche will significantly change the structure and functional activity of the organism. For psychological work on themselves in the project, the subjects used the "Optimization" technique developed by Kirill Titov. The components were selected both common to the crew and taking into account the characteristics of each member. It includes the techniques of psychophysiological self-regulation using sensory-projective mechanisms:self-harmonization for every day, self-harmonization in external and internal stressful situations, preparation for actions that require a "breakthrough", preparation for actions that require precision and concentration, complex harmonization.