Skip to main content

A Mars simulation crew spent 520 days in confinement. Here are their tips

 

If you’re struggling in quarantine right now, you might look for advice from someone how has survived a truly extreme confinement situation, such as an astronaut who was part of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Mars500 simulation study.

Recommended Videos

Simulation missions are psychological experiments to learn about how humans fare in the space environment, without actually sending anyone to space. Especially for missions to Mars, which will require long travel times, a crew will have to work together in difficult circumstances for over a year, with little chance to get away from each other or from their tasks.

The Mars500 simulation mission, which began in 2007, was one of the best-known and longest-running simulation studies, including three different crews of volunteers. It culminated with a 520-day mission featuring a crew of six men from Russia, France, Italy, and China. They spent their time in a simulated spacecraft and had to get by without sunlight, fresh food, or fresh air. So they learned a thing or two about working in isolation, as did the scientists studying them.

The crew of the Mars500 simulation mission
The crew of the Mars500 simulation mission ESA

It is one of these crew members, French engineer Romain Charles, who appears in ESA’s video with tips on surviving confinement. He gave nine tips for staying sane in difficult environments:

  1. Remember that the situation is temporary. Things that you want to do right now but can’t, you may well be able to do later.
  2. Stay busy. It’s easy to get bored and lethargic in confinement, so keep yourself busy with reading, music, and other hobbies. Charles did things like improving his Russian with his Russian crewmates, and getting his Chinese crewmate to teach him calligraphy.
  3. Live in the present. Taking one day at a time feels more manageable than thinking about the long term confinement.
  4. Keep a regular cycle of day and night. Humans respond very well to regular sleep cycles, and very poorly to interrupted cycles. Try to wake up and go to bed at the same time every day.
  5. Be creative. Break the monotony by trying new things and having fun. Charles has delightful photos of the many different and increasingly ridiculous styles of beard he tried during his confinement.
  6. Stay in touch. You’ll feel much better if you have regular contact with family and friends.
  7. Spend energy. You need to burn off all that excess energy through exercise and activity.
  8. Communicate. When you’re in an enclosed space with others, it’s easy to let tensions boil over. Communicate about your needs.
  9. Look for unexpected rewards. Charles describes the absolute joy he experienced when he ate fresh food for the first time after confinement. Things that he had taken for granted became incredibly precious to him.

Charles isn’t the only astronaut to have shared advice on this topic. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield also shared his tips recently.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more