2023-04-17 11:45:18
The long-term stays of humans in space or in another world require testing both the technological and the human component in conditions that are as similar as possible to real ones. This has led to the creation of habitats that simulate a spaceship or base on another world, as well as the space or alien terrain that surrounds them. In such habitats, space missions are sometimes simulated, lasting days, weeks, months, and even more than a year. The crew remains isolated from the rest of Earth, and they only communicate with the outside world under the same conditions as they would from a spaceship or from a base on the Moon or Mars.
An initiative of this type is that of the Hypatia I mission, which also has the pioneering characteristic of having an entirely female crew.
This has been done to compensate for the gender bias that unfortunately accompanies many space missions, and also to provide references for girls and boys who encourage them to embark on professional careers in the astronautics sector.
Of these nine women, all of them from Catalonia, seven are the main crew, while two are reserve. They will work together, from their various specialties, doing the same thing they would do if their mission was to the real Mars. Its mission will run from April 16 to 29, 2023. It will take place in a space facility that the Mars Society operates in a desert area of Utah, United States. These facilities emulate a base on Mars. The surrounding terrain is one of the most visually and geochemically similar on Earth to Martian soil.
Marte. (Foto: NASA JPL / Caltech / USGS)
The main crew includes Mariona Badenas-Agustí, Carla Conejo González, Ariadna Farrés Basiana, Laia Ribas, Núria Jar, Neus Sabaté and Cesca Cufí-Prat. The two reserve crew members are Anna Bach and Helena Arias.
Mariona Badenas-Agustí, crew commander, is an astrophysicist and studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
Carla Conejo González, the crew’s biologist and second in command, also has a background in biotechnology and pharmacy and is a co-founder of Polaris, a science tourism initiative.
Ariadna Farrés Basiana is responsible for security on board. She is a mathematician and works at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the United States.
Laia Ribas, a biologist, is responsible for a greenhouse like the one that could one day function routinely on Martian soil. In this greenhouse, she will do research on agriculture on Martian land, oriented to the cultivation of vegetables on Mars for human consumption. She is a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM), attached to the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) of Spain.
Núria Jar is the chronicler of the mission. She is a scientific journalist, specializing in medicine and the environment.
Neus Sabaté is one of the two engineers on the crew. She is a CSIC research physicist at the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics, and founder of the company Fuelium, oriented towards the creation of environmentally friendly electric batteries.
Cesca Cufí-Prat is the other engineer on the crew. She is an aerospace engineer and works at the Airbus aeronautical company.
Anna Bach is the crew’s reserve scientist. She is a mathematician and computer science expert. She combines art with her work as a data analyst at Scopely.
Helena Arias is the crew’s reserve engineer. She studies physics and mechanical and electrical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the National University of Distance Studies, in Spain.
In addition to research on Martian agriculture, another important area of study during the mission will be to determine the degree of viability of some technologies designed to operate on Mars, highlighting a possible technique to manufacture electric batteries with Martian raw materials, as well as a test of aquaculture that could allow fish to be raised in tanks installed on Mars, to supplement the diet of each astronaut.
The day to day during the mission will be very similar to what they would live on Mars. They will have to put on space suits to make exits to the land adjacent to the simulated Martian base, they will have a limited amount of water, they will eat mostly dehydrated food (as the astronauts who traveled to the Moon did) and the messages to and from the center mission control will take the same time to reach their destination as they would between Earth and Mars.
The Hypatia I mission has been financed by various entities, including the company isardSAT (with offices in Barcelona and the United Kingdom), the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation ( FCRI, by its acronym in Catalan). It has also had the support of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), the University of Barcelona (UB), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, Paul University Sabatier de Toulouse in France, the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and other entities. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)
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