Volunteers are needed by the European Space Agency for a simulated, 520-day trip to Mars.

ARIS - The European Space Agency is looking for 12 volunteers with planetary vision who want to be on the cutting edge and don't get bored easily.

They will make a simulated mission to Mars that will last up to 520 days in "extreme isolation and confinement."

Despite the rigorous conditions, more than 2,000 applications have been received in two days, project manager Jennifer Ngo-Anh said yesterday.

"The reaction has been really overwhelming. My mailbox is full," she said in a telephone interview.

Candidates must be citizens of one of 15 European countries or Canada, be highly motivated, and speak English and Russian, among other requirements.

Unlike the adventurous spirits attracted to the desert-island prospects of reality TV, only the "serious" need apply for this simulated interplanetary voyage, the space agency said. The payoff is likely less glamorous, too. Remuneration is "in line with international standards" for clinical studies, is all it would say.

The Paris-based agency, known as ESA, is working on the Mars500 project with the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow, and the simulated mission will be conducted there and will include Russians. The Russian participants will be chosen separately in Russia.

The volunteers will investigate the "human factor" of a trip to the Red Planet - "a journey with no way out once the spaceship is on a direct path to Mars," ESA says.

The experiment will emphasize psychological factors, including stress resistance. The goal is to test how the volunteers hold up in nearly a year and a half of close confinement, in cramped quarters with others, when communications with Earth can take 20 minutes to reach their destination - each way.

The simulation is to take place in a series of connected modules, mimicking life in a spacecraft on a trip to Mars, including once it has landed on the planet. The routine includes scientific experiments.

It doesn't include full-time weightlessness, however.

"Except for weightlessness and radiation, the simulations will be as close to a real Mars mission as possible," the ESA said in its call for candidates.

The living quarters will include 30-square-foot rooms for each crew member, a kitchen-dining room, living room - and one toilet. No shower is included, and the water supply will be limited.

Food will be "predefined and carefully rationed," the ESA warns. Smoking and drinking will not be allowed.

Special training that precedes the simulations will be as similar as possible to that given to astronauts, said Ngo-Anh.

Not all volunteers will have to take part in the final 520-day simulation, which will have a crew of six: four Russians and two Europeans or Canadians. Two pilot studies of about 100 days are to precede the big one. With two volunteers in each of the three projects, plus backups, a full dozen are needed, ESA says.

Launch date for the first of the shorter simulation voyages is mid-2008, and late 2008 or early 2009 for the full simulated trip to Mars.

Calls for candidates went out Tuesday. By yesterday afternoon, Ngo-Anh, speaking from ESA's Science and Technology Center in the Dutch town of Noordwijk, said she had received more than 2,000 applications.

"It will be hard to find exactly those people who fit" the profile, Ngo-Anh said.

Candidates must be 25 to 50 years old, in good health, with work experience in one of several scientific fields, such as medicine, biology, computer engineering or mechanical engineering, the application says.

What if something goes wrong in the living module that the medical module can't help resolve?

"Every crew [member] can leave the tank at any point in time without giving reasons," said Ngo-Anh said. "We try to find those candidates likely to endure the whole mission."

Potential candidates have all summer to make up their minds whether to apply: The deadline is Sept. 30.

Elaine Ganley

Philadelphia Inquirer, Jun. 22, 2007
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/8126737.html