Madrid, 7 Dec (EFE).-two of the members of the crew of Mars 500, the greatest simulation of a trip to Mars, the engineer italo-Colombian Diego Urbina and Romain Charles French, recommended today that the astronauts that travel to the red planet “patience, tolerance and a handful of books and films”.
Urbina and Charles, which concluded on 4 November his mission of 520-day isolation when opened the hatch one of the modules that simulated an interplanetary spacecraft, told today in Madrid his experience of a simulated trip to Mars will not be possible until at least within 20 or 30 years.
Both are part of a crew of a total of six members – all men and of different nationalities – chosen between 6,000 candidates and they remained isolated, in an experiment that imitated until the last detail each of the phases a mission would have real.
These are the long journey to Mars (eight months), the inclusion in orbit around the red planet, the landing and exploration of its surface, and then return to orbit, the monotonous voyage back and landing in the land
To this end, the Mars 500, located in the Institute of problems Moscow, biomedical facilities on four interconnected habitable modules and one external simulating “MARS”, and more than a hundred experiments were carried out in ellos scientists.
For Diego Urbina, the most difficult of this mission was the “long voyage back to Earth”, more tedious than the first leg, to the point that came it to compare with the “Groundhog Day” (a film where the protagonist lives always a same day).
Why he said, patience is a virtue, as well as tolerance, to “not make a large one small problem”.
This is one of the councils that gives the future astronauts who could travel to Mars, as well as Romain Charles, who also insisted on the need to maintain the time busy with work and leisure and be strict with the schedules.
The two advised also carry many books and a hard drive full of films.
Between the best of the mission, Urbina and Charles are left with the communications with the family and some of the celebrations among the crew, as the birthday, Halloween party, or the new year (lived three different celebrations, the Russian, Chinese and the Western European).
In addition to these more personal experiences, Urbina described his three walks simulated by the surface of Mars with costumes of 30 kilograms, where he had to simulate a fall and imitate the activities which in its day would have to take the first astronauts to reach the real planet red.
Colombian engineer, who said having rediscovered the simple things, recounted that he thought never abandon, and recognized that it was “difficult to be without our women, but not impossible”.
Urbina threw fewer more direct communication with his family and Charles more food and different countries.
The two, along with the rest of the crew were recorded permanently, denied similarities with a television program of affairs: “if so would be a program with little audience”.
They also recalled that they were chosen after many tests, including compatibility characters, as well as physical and psychological.
The next step, and so it is looking at the European Space Agency, is doing an experiment with the astronauts in microgravity in the international space station.
Photography provided by the European Space Agency’s astronaut Diego Urbina (d) and Romain Charles. EFE/file
