Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189

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Acta Astronautica
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The story of 520 days on a simulated flight to Mars

Iva Poláčková Šolcová a,n, Iva Šolcová a, Iva Stuchlíková b, Yvona Mazehóová b
a
The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
b
Faculty of Education, University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The project Mars-500 was the first long-term simulation of a manned flight to Mars. We examined the
Received 3 November 2015 ways crew members described their experiences and their life during simulation, what they saw as key
Accepted 25 April 2016 episodes and key topics in simulation, as well as key problems and key benefits. The aim of this paper is
Available online 29 April 2016
to present the Mars-500 simulation in its complexity, from beginning to end, as a one narrative story.
Keywords: Method: Two weeks after the end of isolation we used narrative qualitative interviews in order to un-
Mars-500 derstand the unique experience of the crew members living and working in isolation and confinement.
Narrative During our ‘Flight Story Interview’ (an adaptation of McAdams´s Life Story Interview) crew members
Peak experience reconstructed a story about their life in a module and revealed important points and processes during
Nadir experience simulation: crew members identified and described the peak experience, nadir experience, turning
Isolation
points, important scenes and challenges and other narrative moments that create a story of a simulated
Flight Story Interview
flight to Mars. The narratives were subjected to horizontal thematic analysis. The story reconstruction
completes quotes from crew member´s diaries published online by the European Space Agency.
Results: The results showed that for the crew members the peak experiences of simulation were cele-
brations, video messages from significant others, and the Mars landing, and that the most difficult
moments were connected with delay or loss of communication and monotony during the second half of
the experiment. The turning points were connected with the Mars episode. Crew members highlighted
other crucial scenes and topics of the project Mars-500 in their narratives, and stressed the issues of food,
coping strategies, or benefits of cultural heterogeneity in an extreme and confined environment.
& 2016 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction seventeen month simulation, six men completed a virtual journey

Are humans able to endure, physiologically and psychologically,
the confinement and isolation of an expedition to Mars? Can we
handle the daily strain of life and working demands in an isolated
group travelling through space in good mental and physical
health? These are some basic questions which the Mars-500
project set it out to answer1.
On June 3 2010 the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP)
and the European Space Agency (ESA), in cooperation with a
number of other partners, launched within the Mars 500 project
the longest simulation of a space flight in history, as the third
phase of a simulation study of a flight to the Mars2. During the
Abbreviations: ESA, European Space Agency; EVA, Extravehicular Activity; FSI,
Flight Story Interview; IBMP, Institute of Bio-Medical Problems; LSI, Life Story In-
terview; MCC, Mission Control Centre; RAS, Russian Academy of Science
n
Correspondence to: Institute of Psychology, The Czech Academy of Science, CZ–
11000, Prague, Hybernska 8, Czech Republic.
E-mail address: polackova@praha.psu.cas.cz (I. Poláčková Šolcová).
1
http://mars500.imbp.ru/en/index_e.html
2
The long-term confinement followed after a 105-day simulation (which took
place a year before, from 31/3/2009 to 14/7/2009) and a 14-day simulation in
November 2007
to Mars, simulated the landing on Mars including extravehicular
activities on its surface, and made their way back from Mars to
Earth. During the 520 day simulation more than one hundred re-
search studies were conducted on technical installations [1,2],
psychophysiology [3,20,21], psychology [4–8,13,18], health [6],
adaptation [7,8,16], group relations [9,10,17], performance
[11,12,14] and operational tools, many of which were based on
data collection through repeated survey completion, regular
medical check-ups, or observation through a security monitoring
system installed inside shared rooms [1–22]. Apart from the ex-
hausting participation in scientific studies, experiments, and the
activities of daily life [15] the crew’s tasks also included, the
wholly autonomous care of the module and its equipment.
In his diary, crew member Romain Charles [23] described days
filled with'smooth routine’:'Then, think that after waking up we
have something like four or five tasks to do per person before
breakfast. Some activities we all have to do (urine sampling, medical
check-up), other tasks are individual such as putting some music on,
preparing the breakfast etc. […] After waking up, there is a rush hour
in our narrow corridor. […] It is a wonder that just 30 minutes after
our wake up, we are all together around the kitchen table…’

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2016.04.026
0094-5765/& 2016 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
Simulation of delayed communication between the Earth and
the spaceship was another rigorously monitored variable of the
experiment [1,4,17,19]. After the module hatch closed, only de-
layed communication was possible, whereas in the first and last
months of the simulation the crew were afforded direct voice
communication with outer world. In all other months the voice
data was delayed and the crew could only effectively communicate
with outer world via delayed video or written messages. During
the Mars period, communication signals were subject to up to
40 minutes of delay.
Changes in mock-up communication between the crew and the
MCC inevitably brought changes in the autonomy of the crew: a
significant variable of the experiment [2,4,5,19]. After the first
month, the crew members were made to handle their tasks and
duties on their own. The crew had been allocated specific tasks
beforehand, but the decision concerning competences, tasks par-
ticipation and responsibilities for their fulfilment was fully up to
them. The amount of foodstuffs and other sources was confined:
the crew took all their supplies with them (food, materials,
clothes, medicines, tools etc.), during the course of the simulated
flight it was not possible to replenish or change anything.
During the flight simulation there were two ‘off-nominal si-
tuations’ staged by experimenters. The first was a ‘circuit in the
central control panel’, which controlled the power supply to the
module at the first third of simulation (November 2010); the crew
found themselves without electricity for more than 24 h and lost
the use of all electrically dependant devices: air-conditioning,
freezer boxes, water and other systems. The second event which
the crew had to deal with was a weeklong ‘communication
blackout’ in April 2011 (officially accounted for by a ‘cosmic elec-
tromagnetic storm’), as a result of which it was not possible to
send or receive any communication: the crew experienced a
complete cut off with the outer world.
2. Method
2.1. Goals of the investigation
The main aim of our investigation was to gain important in-
formation to aid understanding of how humans experience a
length of time spent in isolation and confinement – specifically,
how each individual member of the crew experienced his in-
volvement in the project, what was important, significant and
difficult for crew members and why, how the crew handled the
daily strain of life and working demands, how was the emotional
atmosphere within the crew, how participants evaluated com-
munication or changes in autonomy, and cultural differences.
2.2. Participants
The study comprised six members of the Mars-500 project
(three Russian, two Europeans and one Chinese), all men, between
27 and 38 years of age (M ¼32.16; SD ¼4.99 at the beginning of the
simulation).
2.3. Methodology
To gain a better idea of the experience of the crew members,
we decided to use a qualitative approach and 12 days after the
completion of the isolation phase of the experiment we conducted
individual face-to-face in-depth interviews with all crew mem-
bers. We took the structure of the interview, in part, from the
scenario of McAdams’ Life Story Interview (LSI) [24,25], that we
adapted to a Flight Story Interview (FSI). Whereas the LSI em-
braces the whole life story of the participant with its questions, we
179
focused our investigation on only the part of a participant’s life
which they spent on the Mars-500 project.
We asked the participants to think about their time spent on
the project as a ‘story’, we asked participants to divide the story
into chapters, give names to the chapters and briefly describe their
content. Then we asked them to find several important moments
in their story of the flight to Mars: the moment when they felt the
most uplifted, which they would call the ‘peak experience’, and
one which they could describe as a flop or a downer in the story -
the ‘nadir experience’ when they felt really low, the toughest
moment for them. We were also interested in what they felt to be
a turning point in their story and the crucial memory from the
first, second and last third of their confinement (it was up to each
individual if they chose a good or a bad memory) and we asked
them to describe one significant memory in addition – regardless
of the period of flight where it belonged. Apart from the key
moments, we further asked about the greatest challenge the crew
members had to face, a possible informal role they had in the crew,
or who they saw themselves to be within the crew. We also asked
questions about motivation – what their motivation was when
they embarked upon the project and whether and how it changed
during the course of time. The last part of the interview was de-
voted to cultural differences and the role it played in the story of
the Martian expedition.
Interviews were conducted individually, in English (5x) or
Russian (1x) right in the dwelling module. The length of an in-
terview did not exceed 90 minutes (typically it would take some
75 minutes). Based on the structure of the FSI interview guide we
asked participants questions covering 15 topics to aid under-
standing of how the participant´s viewed the simulation. All the
interviews were audio recorded and transcribed word for word.
The texts were anonymized and subjected to horizontal thematic
analysis.
The results are complemented with quotes from the Diaries of
Romain Charles and Diego Urbina, freely available on the European
Space Agency (ESA)3 websites. The results of the qualitative in-
vestigations are ordered chronologically, as the flight progressed.
3. Results
3.1. Participants’ motivation for taking part in the experiment
What led the individual crew member to participate in the
experiment? To spend a year and a half of one’s life as a researcher
and participant on a simulated flight, to leave one’s whole life
behind, one’s family, nearest and dearest, and work, is not an easy
decision to take.
“My motivation was and still is that I want to enter the space
world, it was something I was looking for from far away, and I wanted
to take an opportunity… and this is my personal motivation, to be
part of it …if possible – I was very happy during the selection because
I was little bit a part of it. Then I was chosen and I knew that it would
not be easy, but it was something I wanted, I really wanted to do…”
“One of my goals was the learning about the space missions and in
some senses there were a lot of interactions of the crew with the
ground. But to be honest I was expecting maybe more work, more
interesting work, there was not really much of it. I had to create my
own tasks…I sometimes felt like I was wasting my time in some
point…”
The participants’ accounts showed that their need for profes-
sional growth was a strong motivation and sometimes a source of
3
3ESA diaries of the project participants are available at
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Mars500/Mars500_diary.
180 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
unpleasantness for them. Participation in a major international
experiment closely related to space research promised the possi-
bility of making a career in this area, establishing contacts with
leading scientists in astronautics and with other experts and
scholars, as well as with senior workers at the mission control
centres for space flights, space agencies, and institutions (e.g.
IMBP, RSA, ESA).
“My motivation was stable; I made all my goals during experi-
ment. Which goals? I know many new scientific methods and I can
work with them in my new work, I met many new scientists from
different countries and from my country — I made new connections, I
have learnt a lot.”
“My goals have not changed much with time – I wanted to join an
attractive and unique project, learn a lot of things from other people,
get a feel for their type of work, professionally develop, earn money…,
it´s a good motivation, too.”
An important motive for participation was the possibility of
one’s personal growth and development of actual knowledge and
skills. The development of skills was not limited to astronautics: it
also embraced medical, technical, methodological, instrumenta-
tion and language competences. Last but not least a substantial
reason for participation was the financial compensation4 and some
crew members were quite open about it being so or, as time
passed, it became an important motivation to keep themselves in
the experiment.
”Money, money, money, from the beginning to the end…”
“During the first half of the isolation I did not think much about
the money and I thought a lot about the mission, how to make it as
realistic for me as possible, but in the second half
I thought about money much more…”
During the experiment a new motive closely connected with
enduring the simulation grew in importance: A strong feeling of
responsibility.
“And then I had another reason, Iva – I did not want to let you
/scientists/ down, cheat the people like you, because many people
gave me this job and the people trusted me. It was strong
responsibility…”
“We made this promise, so we should be reliable, we should keep
it, and so we could not give up in the middle. I am not this kind of
person; no one from the crew is this kind of person.”
The narratives show that participants were acutely aware of the
great amount of work done by scientists and the organizers of the
study and of the cost of the whole project and they did not want to
disappoint the trust given to them by the participating organiza-
tions and research teams. The premature cessation of the experi-
ment, even if only by a single person, would have had an en-
ormous impact on all the data obtained during the simulation.
Although the option to knock on the hatch and say ‘I quit, I do not
want to continue the experiment any longer’, was provided and all
participants signed their informed consent to confirm that they
had taken account of this relevant possibility, the reality was dif-
ferent, as mentioned by Diego Urbina in his press interview [26]:
‘We were allowed to leave the simulation because of ethics, but in
reality it would not be as simple as taking the decision to go home
and open the door. There are so many factors at stake, it does not
really even cross the mind as a real option.’ And later [27]: ‘It is a
common misconception among some external observers that in this
isolation the crew felt they could end the simulation at any time and
go home with little or no consequence’. The perceived responsibility
for the success of the experiment and the perceived trust placed in
every individual can be regarded as an important motivation for
the participants for staying in long-term isolation. At the same
time a serious ethical question arises for the organizers, as to
4
Reward for participation in the experiment was never formally published.
‘modification’ of informed consent in cases where the pledge the
participant makes is of this extreme nature. However, we never
know what participants should prepare for and it is difficult to
inform participant about future scenarios we cannot accurately
predict.
3.2. Key episodes of isolation and confinement
A space flight, as well as a long-term stay in isolation has
several phases. The flight is always preceded by a long preparation
phase for the crew members, which in the case of space missions
takes a few years: it is not any different in the case of a simulated
space flight. The preparatory phase of the main part of the Mars-
500 experiment took place at several levels: technological, orga-
nizational, health-check and psychological. The ESA candidate
Diego Urbina [26] described the selection process as follows: ‘I
applied, ESA did a review of the curricula of the candidates and called
by phone the shortlisted ones. Those who passed the phone interview
had psychological tests and an interview with a panel in Cologne at
EAC. Those who passed the panel interview went to a hospital in
Moscow to do medical checks for one week. After the medical checks,
a few candidates were shortlisted and we started training for several
months. Based on the results of the training, the final crew of 6 was
chosen.’ At the psychological level, the candidates as crew mem-
bers were selected based on their abilities and qualifications,
personality traits, their ability to cope with stress, a sense of
teamwork and mutual compatibility. The process of final crew
selection included the training them in health care skills, mutual
psychological support, coping with stress and more, but also im-
portant and non-simulated outdoor survival training - in a winter
forest near Moscow, and different types of training which astro-
nauts normally undergo (e.g. «Paraflighter» test-bench).
From our outer world the 520-day simulation consisted of the
flight phase of the project, the start of simulation, the journey to
Mars, the Mars landing and activities on the Mars surface, the
return to Earth and the completion of the project. However the
crew recorded more phases of the simulation: the first phase of
the simulation (leaving out the three-month pre-experimental
preparation in Moscow) comprised an adaptation to regimen and
daily routine filled with the study of instructions and methodol-
ogies of completing questionnaires and physiological measure-
ments, caring for the module, looking for the stored supplies, task
organization and such like. Participants characterized this phase in
agreement as the phase of technical adaptation.
“First chapter should be from the beginning - two or three
months…. I did not feel too much isolated, we needed a long time to
adapt to a new environment and relationships between each other
and I think we spent a lot of time about how to use the module, check
the food, who will prepare the food for tomorrow, who will prepare
the work for tomorrow. We made it first two month day by day, we
followed all the experiment – after three month we got used to it and
follow it all the experiment - this chapter is adaptation.”
“First chapter we can call the “beginning” and it lasted about first
four month …and it was maybe not so hard but maybe it was …
demanding. We had to adopt all the schedules, all the regime in
isolation and when we did it, it became very easy for me.”
“…living here it went quite quickly, but we had to do all the ex-
periments, and we need to do them three or four times before we
adapt. The first adaptation was quick but technical adaptation took
3 or 4 month.”
The technical adaptation could be divided into adaptation to
the environment (habitation), adaptation to work routines and
psychological adaptation – such as adjustment of all crew mem-
bers to build a team, coping with separation from normal life and
the like. Technical adaptation took approximately two to four in-
itial months according to the crew: the initial hundred days of
 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
confinement. This phase is regarded as one of the most strenuous
stages as it involved learning, establishing rules, organization and
planning.
“Then the experiment began and we struggled a bit at first, looking
for things and figuring out how to use everything in the module. It
was like being in a new house. We had to read a lot of instructions
concerning the experiments, but after some time we learned how to
do everything and it became kind of a routine. We learned how to
handle the storeroom, count meals and suchlike, we knew where
things were stored, different items stacked…We had a menu set for
every day that we had to take – there was a day written on the box –
the date.”
“At the very beginning we had to quickly get our bearings in the
amount of tests and experiments, sort out what the researchers ac-
tually want us to do … organize the whole work and set up some sort
of routine – organize and plan the tasks, share them out … That was
difficult for me, maybe for all of us I guess … All experiments had
different methodologies, different requirements and procedures and
we had to learn all that, each experiment had a different place as-
signed to it and a different rhythm and all that needed to be prepared.
I was interested and so I watched all the experiments, also the
medical ones… When we learned all that, it went quickly; we learned
one from the other. Sometimes, mainly in the beginning, we did not
know at all what to do with different devices, how an experiment
should go on, and we had to go back to the documents… It took us
about three months…, then it went well.”
The next phase is described by some crew members as their
‘first down’ - a negative mood. The crew acquired all the skills
required and performed their works and duties in a near auto-
matic way, handling the daily routine without a hitch. Some three
months after the experiment started, the crew thus found them-
selves in the phase of initial monotony and dissonance.
“The chapter two is about boredom ….and monotony…you did
not lose your energy, but you really tried everything to get your en-
ergy back, you did not want to learn anything, study anything….We
shut ourselves in our personal room, often we were in our rooms,
wrote letters, read something and sometimes we felt that it is not
good so we went outside, in the kitchen, we talk about some funny
thing to have some fun, to make some jokes…”
“I would call this chapter ‘the first period of feeling down’.”
“It was the same every day, the same walls, the same floor, each
day was just like the others, it was like in normal life, nothing unu-
sual… Every month the same experiments, the same tasks were re-
peated, it was all like one and the same month which repeats itself
over and over again – we did the same experiments time and time
again, completed the same questionnaires…”
3.3. Off-nominal situations
The break in the first monotony and first down was accented by
news from the outside. Three months after the simulation started
– on 5 August 2010 – a mining accident occurred in Chile, where 33
miners were trapped underground in a gold and copper mine. The
crew of the Mars-500 project were deeply touched by the accident
mediated to them by the MCC, they felt great solidarity with the
buried miners, who were going through their involuntary period
of isolation, and expressed their full support to them. Romain
Charles [28] wrote about the mining disaster in Chile: ‘When you
are in isolation you tend to feel closer to all the other people who are
living, or who have lived, the same kind of experience. From a former
colleague who sailed on submarines to our fellow Mars 500 collea-
gues Oliver Knickel and Cyrille Fournier, I have received a lot of advice
to help me cope with the isolation. I really appreciate and understand
them now. The main advice that I hear from everybody is “stay busy,
be careful with your health and keep a normal day-night schedule”.
This advice I would like to share with all the people who are in
181
isolation. In particular, all our thoughts go to the 33 miners in Chile
who are trapped beneath the ground. Their living conditions are
really tough and I hope that our message, which Diego kindly
translated into Spanish, will reach them.’ 5
The phase of monotony and feeling low among the crew eased
toward the end of 2010. At the beginning of December the crew
were surprised by a first off-nominal situation. The course of ‘an
exciting end to 2010’ is described by Romain Charles [29] as fol-
lows: ‘On 1 December I had a busy morning. With Sukhrob we are
responsible for two experiments, which need to be performed in
parallel and involve many devices.. […] After that I went to my room
where I began to study Russian. I was still in my room when, around
at 13:00 hours, suddenly the power went down and everything
stopped around us except the security lights and the computers with
batteries. The crew gathered in the kitchen to share information and
define the best action plan. While the others were retrieving personal
lights, Alexey and I checked all the power units of the modules. For
each of them all the interrupters were OK. At that moment we re-
ceived a message from ground control telling us that the main
transformer of the building surrounding our modules was on fire. We
did not know how long it would take for the engineers’ team to solve
the problem. So, to save some power on the emergency batteries and
to avoid any new issues, we unplugged all the electric devices and we
even removed the bulb of some security lamps which were not nee-
ded. In the end only two lights remained: one in the kitchen and one
near the bathroom. To understand our situation, you have to imagine
an ‘end of the world’ scene. We were only 6 crew members lost in
black modules with a thick silence around us. The friendly humming
of the ventilation disappeared at the same time as the electricity. We
could not even get more than 2 l from the tap because the pressure
given by the pumps inside the water system had fallen too. Our re-
action was to stick together close to the only place which still had a
light: the kitchen’.
We can assume that an emergency situation created a new
reality inside the module – no matter how unpleasant and in-
convenient it was, in essence it was perceived within the crew like
a break in monotony, a task which requires action and an im-
mediate result. Along with that the main refuge of the crew was
identified – the kitchen and the fact that the crew members felt
better and safer when keeping together.
3.4. Celebrations matter
At the end of December another phase, different in quality (at
least as compared with the phase of boredom and monotony),
emerged in the simulation: the phase of celebrations. Celebrations
had provided relief to the crew from the daily routine from the
very beginning. Every birthday of a crew member was carefully
planned and in the confined environment this required special
abilities of improvisation, commitment, invention and creativity.
Getting presents and pleasing the birthday boy is complicated in
an environment with limited resources: there is nowhere to buy
presents in isolation. Thus the birthday boy mostly got some
creative presents: posters created on the computer or by hand,
their favourite film, book or music, which the crew ordered for
them well ahead from the MCC and such like. The organizers of the
Mars-500 project had also, before the start of the isolation, hidden
presents for all crew members (from members of their families as
well as the organization and other people) for these special oc-
casions. On participants birthdays, congratulations from the out-
side also arrived, recorded as video messages by their loved ones
5
The rescue effort in Chile started on 6 August, but it was not until 22 August
2010 that a probe reached the correct location (at 688 m below ground). In mid-
October 2010 all the 33 miners were saved from their forced isolation.
182 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
or significant others and close friends.
“During the first third of our stay we had about four birthdays and
it meant the world to me, because we could actually connect with the
‘real life‘ - have some ‘normal‘ time.”
“It was exciting, how to celebrate and organize a birthday in
isolation, how to arrange the party, who needs to be waved to in a
video message, how to make refreshments… It needs to be added that
MCC prepared special food and presents for us that we found in the
storeroom, and the boys really enjoyed their birthdays.”
“When my family came here to see me, they congratulated me on
my birthday via a video message, and it was just nice…”
The accounts show that birthday celebrations added activities
to the typical daily programme in the module that were not usual
and at the same time allowed the crew members, thanks to their
ritualized form, to return to reality for a while. The crew could,
legitimately, wish for something extra: on their birthday they
could meet through video messages with their loved ones, they
could share some moments with people outside and there were
other birthday related benefits, such as fulfilment of the need for
creative activity, the need to make something new, to see the re-
sult of one’s work. Birthday celebrations thus were among the vital
moments for all the crew members that made it possible for them
to cope with isolation and separation. They connected their lives
with the life outside and allowed them to live such moments of
connection with the outside world.
“My second birthday here in the module - it was not very different
from my first birthday here, but it was lot of small things that made it
exceptional day, I still had some things my family gave me a year ago.
And plenty of other new things appeared in the EU-50 Martian
module: I also received a lot of e-mails from my friends and family,
some people came to visit me, sent me video messages, a lot of people
from Moscow and around talked to me. And the guys already knew
me better after a year of our life together and gave me very personal
gifts, and all the whole day was something exceptional.”
“I liked to do new things, make new things, like birthday posters
for example.”
“When my family had a party and sent me a short video, a brief
cut of the party – that was when I felt really high emotion… I ima-
gined myself being with them, it felt very real, yes, it was a short
video, but for that little moment I was with them, away from here, it
was an unique moment…”
Celebrations in isolation were particularly important. It started
with Halloween and followed with the European and Russian
Christmas and the European, Russian and Chinese New Year, and
afforded the needed diversion from the period of monotony and
tedium. As in the case of birthdays, the holiday celebrations also
required special preparations. Each crew member was ‘personally
committed’ to the quality of celebration of his nation’s traditional
holiday. The Christmas or New Year celebrations therefore pro-
vided an opportunity to present cultural customs and traditions of
each crew member’s country of origin. The preparations for
Christmas in Europe and the Russian and Chinese New Year, for
example, involved a lot of effort.
“Christmas is very important to me, but for the other four it means
nothing. I spent a lot of energy to bring the spirit of Christmas here.
And just after Christmas I had not too much energy for New Year's Eve
and I was a bit afraid about what would happen. And what I learnt is
that New Year’s Eve is huge in Russia so our three guys were full of
energy and bring in lot of spirit and it was very great and we had very
good day and night together. It was great day.”
“During those days… the one who had those party who were
more involved share more energy, their culture with the others talk
about what they do during this party at home, it was kind of bonding
those days, so it was good.”
“Then we celebrated Christmas. We were not very familiar with
the tradition, the guys prepared it and involved us in the preparations
and we helped them hang up all the things, ornaments and chains
and we all enjoyed it … we made a Christmas tree, decorated it – well
mainly the guys, because there is not such tradition in our country,
but we helped them, we all joined in and we took pictures, so you can
look at them on the internet…”
The celebrations of the culturally varied holidays with specific
traditions were not only the way to learn plenty of interesting
things about life, customs and traditions in the different cultures,
but they also contributed to building stronger bonds between in-
dividual crew members. The initiators and organizers of celebra-
tions often felt a deep connection with their culture through the
traditional rituals associated with the holidays. Celebrations of
holidays, in particular of the religious Christmas (with a paper
Christmas tree and chains and with green and red EEG diodes in
place of decorations) and the New Year, belonged from the parti-
cipants’ viewpoint to the greatest days of the simulation, those
which the crew remembers as ‘peak experiences’ of the simulated
Martian expedition.
3.5. Reaching Mars: A peak experience and turning point
Besides the celebrations, the peak experiences unquestionably
included the conquering of Mars. The crew members described
another phase of the space flight simulation – the Martian period –
as the most crucial and, at the same time, the most exacting period
of the experiment. Mars was in fact the central and a single con-
trollable moment during the isolation and the crew devoted a
great deal of attention to it. The whole Martian episode was closely
watched: it was the focus of interest of not just the participating
scientific-research teams, but also of the media and the public. It
was the only stage during which part of the crew could be seen
‘online’. And it was the goal of the mission planned for the crew to
reach to fulfil half of the task entrusted to it.
”Then we were approaching Mars, we had to carefully prepare for
that – read various instructions, how to enter into the EU-50 module,
how to connect our modules. The guys had to get ready for landing,
learn how to put on spacesuits, we had a lot to practice. We actually
saw the complete methodology for the first time and we learned and
did everything as we went along – it was pretty extensive. We had to
prepare the Martian vehicle for the tour round Mars, practise how to
run it.”
“The peak experience was Mars, because there was a lot of at-
tention and we had to put in some really good work … I liked it.”
On 1 February 2011 the crew split into an ‘Orbital’ group (set up
earlier) made up of three people – Romain Charles, Sukhrob Rus-
tamovich Kamolov, Alexey Sergevich Sitev – and the ‘Martian’
group comprising Diego Urbina, Alexander Egorovich Smoleevskiy
and Yue Wang. The commander of the ‘Martian’ crew was Alex-
ander Smoleevskiy. The ‘Orbital’ crew were to provide support to
the ‘Martian’ crew, e.g. when opening the landing module (EU-50),
undocking and re-docking the module, communication with Earth
and other activities.
The ‘Martian’crew was tasked with the virtual landing on Mars
(the ‘Virtu’ operation – virtual undocking of the orbital module,
landing, simulation of emergency situations and their solution on
Mars, and after a month re-docking with the mothership etc.),
control of the Mars rover (the ‘Gulliver’ operation – the movement
round the simulated surface of the planet Mars and taking samples
with a real Mars rover) and the performance of three extra-
vehicular activities (EVA) in Orlan-E spacesuits, again including
sampling on the simulated surface of Mars (‘Skafander’
simulation).
February 1 2011 thus brought an enormous change to the iso-
lation. There was an entirely new space of the EU-50 module (an
area of 50 m3), inaccessible until then, and the EU-50 module was
completely filled with supplies – new supplies of food, new
 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
clothes, tools and more. Presents from families and friends were
also delivered to the module. As described by one member of the
crew, the opening of the landing module brought a ‘breath of fresh
air’ and, ‘joyous energy’ to the confinement and overall created an
air of big change.
“On 1 February we opened the hatch for a Martian lander. Mars –
that was a big symbol, we actually reached our goal and, on top of
that, the module was full of boxes with food, - new food, clothes– new
clothes, instruments and other things – new things… The Martian
lander was also a new room to open, so everybody was so happy - it
was like a fresh air coming inside the module… Each of us was so
happy just to go through there and take everything to the storage
module, it was lot of work, intense, but it was good. We enjoyed it.”
First the crew had to clear the whole EU-50 module of
6.3 m  6.17 m size, furnished with only three beds, two desks, a
toilet, the communication system, air-conditioning, water supply
and the fire alarm system. The landing module was connected to
two tunnels, one led to the main EU-250 module and the other to
the Mars surface simulator. The clearing of EU-50 took the crew
whole day. The ‘Martian’ crew spent all 30 days in the EU-50
landing module. Although the ‘conquest of Mars’ is considered as a
positive, and for some members of the crew also the most im-
portant moment in the whole period of isolation, it needs to be
realised that the Mars phase was the toughest and most stressful
phase of the simulation project.
“Hard working days, very hard, the length of this chapter is short,
but full of good memories, and work…… The six of us split into two
groups, but even though we were separated, we kept communication
every day, via radio or video messages. At the beginning we had a lot
of work to do in preparation of EVA – we got space suits ready, read
all the instructions and hand books, and we practised. It was not until
the first landing on Mars that we gained some confidence that we can
do it… Even when we went to bed, we practised sampling with a
broom and in the morning again and again. And when the first EVA
went well, we could say to ourselves that we can do it. And after the
success of the first EVA we realized it was not so hard and we calmed
down – and we did the second, and the third EVA….We were excited
but not so nervous as before.”
“Mars – that was the main goal… There were plenty of emotions
in that… it had to do with the success of the whole experiment…”
The reaching of Mars was the period closely watched by many
scientific institutions in the world, the time awaited and reported
on by quite a few world newspapers which gave attractive names
to their articles. Whereas the ‘Orbital’ crew received little attention
from the media, the pressure on the crew in the ‘Martian’ landing
module was enormous. The first extravehicular activity (14 Feb-
ruary 2011) was carried out by Urbina and Smoleevskiy, the sec-
ond by Smoleevskiy and Wang (18 February 2011) and the third
(22 February 2011) by Urbina and Smoleevskiy. The ‘Martian’ crew
were very happy on the one hand, but they experienced a great
deal of stress and nervousness as a result of enormous expecta-
tions placed on them from the general as well as professional
public.
“I had two difficult days during isolation. The first one was the day
when we had to go on the simulator of Mars, because we knew that a
lot of people watch it and we have to make everything very good,
perfect, ideal and we felt nervous and arousal…”
“When we go out in our space suit, it was very exciting; it was the
best moment not only from that part of isolation but from the whole
isolation. It was the best part of experiment”.
“After we finished the first EVA, I was happy because we did it.”
The rest of the crew on the mothership felt a similarly emo-
tional way as the ‘Martian’ crew about the landing on Mars. But
not everybody could step out onto Mars.
“No, I am not going to deny that I wanted to take a walk in a space
suit as well…I can get over. We were sorry about it but we were
183
pleased by the success of the whole crew.”
The ‘Orbital’ crew (unlike the ‘Martian’ one), had ordinary
routines planned for them, however, there was one significant
change: different food and changes of the diet. Whereas the
‘Martian’ crew had to endure a month of having only cold and
canned food, the ‘Orbital’ crew could already vary their menu,
which elicited almost envious comments from the ‘Martian’ group.
In the phase of conquering Mars we can partly understand the
talks about food as a kind of coping strategy of the ‘Martian’ crew
as well as very safe topic to discuss.
“We talk about the food, because the other group started eating
the other half of the food that we got for the way back. We had food
in the module EU-50, but it was cold, we spoke all the time about
food, like: it´s meat and not fish any longer …, it is meat, it is meat…”
The Martian period ended with the end of February 2011: both
crews reunited without any difficulties, conflicts or problems – no
change was recorded by the crew compared to the state before the
Mars period. Reaching Mars was the main purpose and goal of the
Mars 500 project, and also the turning point, the beginning of the
virtual return home, to Earth.
“Everything was good, the boys got EVA, they did everything right
and the Mars mission was accomplished with some joy that we
carried it off.
We started out way back calm and more at ease…”
“I think after Mars, I mean Mars was so exciting, that moment was
so different, after Mars it was (a downward slope) very slope down in
a monotony and not nice things, I think…”
The Mars period was generally evaluated by the crew as very
satisfying and important; partial targets of the experiments were
reached, namely the simulated conquering of the planet Mars. It
turned out that even after eight months of isolation the crew
members were capable of concentrated performance and they
were in good mental health, able to plan and make decision and
divide tasks and activities in an autonomously managed crew.
3.6. The way back
After thirty days of separation, the crew reunited in March
2011. The crew’s good mood after the excellent performance on
Mars gave into the feeling of burnout and a decline in mood and
motivation. The journey back was mentally draining; all expecta-
tions, or what the men could ‘look forward to‘ during the project,
was now behind and what remained was a long journey home
filled with completing questionnaires, physiological measure-
ments, health checks, sampling and the like. The return journey
thus started with a bad hangover.
“From the end of landing to the end of July, that’s about four
months, it was a very depressive period, because all the most exciting
moments were over, the landing on Mars was over…. It was hard, we
had achieved the most important goal, it was harder, it was not re-
laxing… there were no more surprises left, no new activities, just
those same experiments day by day, monitoring, checking of de-
vices….the job followed strict schedule … It was difficult and de-
pressing…We could not expect anything new to happen, the aim was
too far, and without surprise, so it was difficult to face….”
“This was ‘Less smile time‘, because the first half we always could
find the smile on each face but in this period I did not smile, barely
smile, even we watch the movie together, I barely hear the happy
laugh from other crew members, expect one - he is all the time
‘hahaha’.”
Again the news from the outside affected the mood among the
crew shortly after the Mars period. Some crew members took it
hard when they learned about the disaster in Japan6, as well as the
6
On 11 March 2011 Japan was hit by an earthquake of 9.0 degrees on the
184 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
news about the outbreak of civil war in Syria, initiated by the
suppression of civil unrest on 15 March 2011 within the Arab
Spring. The escalation of violence in Africa had a marked negative
impact on the crew within the second third of the isolation
project.
“This memory is rather sad. It was negative… it was beginning of
war in the Africa - Syria. People from outside supplied short news to
us. Syria and Japan tsunami …it was very sad news for me.”
The after-Mars period was perceived as monotonous. The time
was passed in performing daily tasks that were absolute routine
for them. As Romain Charles [30] wrote: ‘…every day for the past
year we woke up at the same time to do the same medical controls
with the same devices: no week-end or holiday breaks for a year!’
Nearly all crew members admitted in their interview that their
mood had fluctuated, and, as Diego Urbina [31] described using a
beautiful metaphor: ‘Keeping steady is not simple; we as individuals
have ups and downs and our mood may fluctuate, but as a group we
keep level, moving forward like a flock of birds. And like a flock of
birds that must look for the ascending thermal currents that keep
them flying high, once one of us picks up energy and height, the whole
flock knows ‘where the thermal is’, and all of us go up.’ Keep the
mood positive and do not spoil the good mood of the others. That
was the basic rule in the module.
3.7. Food matters
A change for the better in the second half of the flight was the
change of the diet. Whereas the crew had their diet exactly set
until the landing on Mars, after the departure they had new food
available (hidden until then in EU-50). The menus were set up for
a week ahead of time – which meant that everyone could choose
for a particular week when, what and how much they would eat
and whether they would leave their favourite meal until the
weekend or they would have it at the beginning.
“And it was nice in the second and third thirds that the food and
menu changed, because during the first third we had to eat what they
had put on the plate… We had to finish up our meals, but in those
later stages we could eat what we wanted…though not completely,
but we could choose our meals within one week…We could eat more
or less, as we wanted to – the nearer we got to Earth, the more we
could manage our diet.”
“…The food repeated on one week cycle. Every Monday we ate
good kascha, every Tuesdays something else. We could change a few
things but the good food was first to disappear… And after few weeks
it was boring, tuna, chocolate bars, yes – it was quickly out. Food was
really a thing of never ending discussions…”
Food during the Mars-500 experiment turned out to be a reg-
ularly discussed topic in itself. Food was clearly a theme that got
the communication started and accelerated – it was generally the
most frequent topic discussed among the crew over those seven-
teen months (the other subjects included e.g. cultural differences,
women, or money). In confinement food was a natural reason for
meeting, the way and bridge leading to other topics (such as fa-
mily, cultural customs, cultural differences and traditions, history
of traditions, history of countries, how things are done in different
places and more). The talk about food provided relief for the crew
and made the kitchen a refuge. Food was matched by the crew as
the starting point for all conversation.
“It must to be food. For example, I said: in my country, we eat this
and that… But it was not just the food, it opened ways to other topics
– such as culture, history and more.”
(footnote continued)
Richter scale magnitude and the following tsunami of up to 38 m height took the
lives of more than 15 thousand people.
“Food, it was the biggest topic all the time, yes, really. We talked
always about whether some food is good or food it bad, what we did
with it in our country and so on.”
“Food, that’s for sure… we talk a lot about the girls too, and dif-
ferent cultures …, No, the conversation always started with food and
then it turned to different cultures and countries and we chatted
about things and how they work in different places.”
In relation to eating habits the crew members were confronted
with substantial cultural differences regarding culturally de-
termined eating habits and preferences. As we mentioned before,
the crew had (within an experiment of one scientific team) a
strictly controlled and prescribed diet in the first third of the
isolation. Crew members had prescribed what they were to eat
and in what amounts. They were not allowed to eat anything in
addition and no serving was allowed to be left unfinished. (In spite
of the regular obligatory exercise, some crew members put on
weight during the initial months.) In particular some crew mem-
bers had difficulty adapting to the diet (mainly due to their origin
and eating habits in their culture). Only after the Mars period, on
their way back to Earth, were the crew allowed some choices
about their diet, but even that added only little variety to their
diet. Although the crew grew lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions
and more vegetables in one part of the module (called green-
house), there was an absolute minimum of fresh and other than
canned food during the time of simulation, as well as ‘culturally
fitting’ foods.
“Some people were really missing a lot their food and their way of
eating.”
“I prefer the grain food, one kind of rice, only one kind of food was
tasting like grain food, but it was like”kascha”, it was mushy. It did
not taste like our food. But we have just one packet of this food for one
week. When I have the chance to taste this food, I felt great, always
when a new week started, I was looking forward to this food and was
really happy. But the food was not good every week, sometimes it was
smelly - it is not hermetically closed, so not every week I could eat
this good rice…but once I opened it and it did not smell I was happy.”
Eating and feasting habits are different in each culture, and
whereas in some countries eating is a social event, in others it is a
time of undisturbed quiet that you have for yourself alone and can
devote to your thoughts and yourself – and chattering over a meal
is simply considered impolite and not done. In this respect it was
not easy for the crew to reconcile some eating preferences and
habits to everybody’s satisfaction.
“Of course they are different, but you see, Russians and Tajiks like
talking, they are sociable, but they just do not talk during dinner or
supper. It is said “when you eat do not speak” in our country. But the
boys from Europe like talking over meals - it is natural for them. And
we asked please, do not talk, please, please be quite …”
Overall the food proved to be a very important issue in relation
to a long-term simulation project with limited resources and it
will be very important in the future (e.g. within interplanetary
spaceflights) to pay more attention to something seemingly so
ordinary like food, however, not only to its variety, balance and
nutritiousness, but also with regard to the cultural origin of in-
dividual members of the crew.
3.8. Culture variability as an important pillow against deprivation
Culture variability within the crew was perceived very posi-
tively by the crew members, although diversity of a work team (in
terms of national, ethnocultural, gender, religious, or age differ-
ences) is frequently regarded as a problem which has a potential to
decrease team performance [see e.g. 32]. Within the Mars-500
project the multiculturalism of the crew was clearly considered as
a benefit by its individual members. Particularly at the beginning
of simulation mutual coordination, teamwork and communication
 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
were not easy within the crew because of language: some mem-
bers spoke just Russian and some others spoke just English, and
only two members could speak both (English and Russian).
Naturally, after several months of using body language and gues-
sing the meaning of words a new common language developed
which combined English and Russian and in which the simpler
English sentence patterns and English verbs were peppered with
fitting Russian words like ‘kascha’ or ‘kayutka’. At the beginning of
the experiment some crew members set out to learn Russian or
English as it went on, and later they struggled to carry on, or more
exactly to find the motivation to keep learning a foreign language
on their way back from Mars.
“I stopped to learn Russian language. It was so bad, but it was so
difficult. You can look in my exercise book, first few chapters it is full
of my remarks, at the beginning I worked really hard ….But after
Mars landing I lost my courage, because I forgot lot of things, and I
thought: I have to start from the beginning, no, I do not want to do it
again.”
Language differences played an important role in the commu-
nication at first, crew members utilized body language and had to
recognize a lot from expressions on others faces. Actually, we can
suppose that the language barrier increased sensitivity toward the
communication effort of the others and toward their feeling and
goals and paradoxically it helped with rapport within the crew.
Based on the initial drill of nonverbal communication the crew
gained much more than just that: they quickly learned to under-
stand the meaning that the other person wants to communicate,
regardless of the words he used.
“There was some development because we had to find some
common ground to talk together and at the beginning especially the
language was the difficulty…. But little by little we started to un-
derstand each other better, sometimes even without words … You
know if someone is doing something and needing help, you help
him… without too much words.”
“First of all language skills of people improved, we had found a
common language, we tried hard to understand each other.”
Despite the language difficulties dissimilarity of cultures was
evaluated as clearly positive particularly in relation to information
deprivation. As for supply of information, the crew fully depended
on the MCC: individual crew members could make requests for
books, newspapers and news, however ‘fresh’ or online access to
information was not available during the simulation. Everything
was filtered through the MCC and delayed for several hours or
days, sometimes even longer, and it happened now and then that
some of the requested information, books or journals never
reached the crew, having gotten misplaced somewhere in the in-
formation transhipment. The crew members agreed that their
hunger for information had been growing during the simulation.
For example specialists experienced a strong desire to get new
information related to their profession and they read their spe-
cialist journals with great interest from cover to cover, which in
their normal life they would barely take out of their letter box (as
someone of the crew said).
“The psychologists outside started to work very good, maybe they
were ordered to, but they started to send us news, movie and so on.
Throughout the whole experiment this did not work correctly, in fact
it did not work at all. From the May 2011 it started running smoothly,
information arrived reliably, as if we had a contract for that or so. I
think the people outside started to work well…. before it was not
good. Well, from May we had really good times – they send us news,
movies, we had new program, they send me American magazine
about my profession so I could read news about my profession, and it
was very interesting to read news about my job. I kept asking for that
journal, I begged them to start sending it from the very beginning of
experiment… and it did not begin to work until nearly after a year. I
do not know, though, to what extent this was or was not part of the
185
experiment.”
In confinement each member of the crew became a unique and
immediately available source of current, interesting and authentic
information thanks to their culture specific origin, which can be
regarded as a significantly positive phenomenon. The differences
in cultures acted as a facilitator and sometimes even the main
reason for communication, because, as one crew member noted,
normally he would not always join the conversation, but as the
others came from different countries, he felt a greater need to
explain how things are from his point-of-view, and therefore from
the perspective of his culture. Each participant spoke not only for
himself, but he represented a culturally specific value system,
which defined him in large part in relation to the others.
“Differences are interesting, because you can learn a lot about
other cultures, China, France, Russia, and Italy or Columbia, and
others could learn more about my country.”
“Culture is interesting, you have more topics to communicate…
you can talk immediately about with the others. I guess if we were all
from the same country, the same culture, I believe I would not have
learned so much about other countries and many times I would not
be willing to say something, but as they were from elsewhere, I
wanted to tell them. It is interesting how approaches to life can differ
so much.”
The unquestionable benefit of cultural diversity within the
Mars-500 project was first of all due to the fact, according to the
crew, that nobody on the team was a stubborn, strong supporter of
only one approach as the only one possible, right, legitimate and
relevant, but all of them were open toward distinctiveness (em-
bracing culture, form and role playing) and considerate, tolerant
and helpful toward each other: they mutually fully respected a
different viewpoint of the other person. The reflexion of otherness
carried considerable personal growth for some crew members.
“The most important thing I have learned is that nothing is right or
wrong, that there is just different behaviour, and day after day I came
to understand this more and more … I understood that considering
culture, nothing is simply good or bad, there are only different points
of view.”
“In our crew it was good, because for us it was very interesting to
know a lot about other cultures, we laugh a lot, we talked about
cultural differences a lot …I think different cultures in one crew is
better, but not with strong differences, for example religion, a Muslim
or a Christian could make more problems in one crew, or strong
national ideas or differences in temperament and personality… It is
better when all crew members are sanguinics or phlegmatics…”
“Our commander, for example, was so much different from those
in my country. For illustration, he said, we have to do some experi-
ment tomorrow. The second day he asked me to come, but firstly he
prepared all the things for the experiment and then explained to me
how to do it properly – this right, this left, just so…. In my country a
commander would never behave like this. He would only call me to
say that I was to do this and this (and he would not care about how I
would do it), so I would go to the laboratory, prepare everything and
then I would only bring the result to the commander. It is completely
different. Before this project, I thought that was normal, that’s how a
commander should and must behave. But inside I found that a leader
can also be like the one here…”
The Mars-500 project was an exceptional one in respect of
coming to terms with cultural diversity. There was no major dis-
pute or difficulty over the whole length of the experiment (against
the expectations of many researchers including ourselves) that
could be put down to cultural differences. One important result of
our study is the evidence that a multicultural team made up of
individuals culturally very far apart, who represent different (and
often polarized) value orientations, is able to manage long-term
isolation and gain a maximum positive benefit from the cultural
diversity.
186 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
3.9. Nadir experiences in the story of simulated flight to Mars
While we expected that conflicts emerging from cultural dif-
ferences would occur, the crew saw problems in something com-
pletely different. In their view, the ‘nadir moments’, the moments
when they felt really down, related exclusively to communication,
respectively communication inaccuracies of the MCC. The crew
had to cope with the loss of e-mails from their significant others;
with mail arriving a few days later than it should have7, with si-
tuations when private mail was sent, by error, to one’s direct su-
perior instead of a close friend to whom it had been addressed etc.
“This was November 2010, I was very sad at the time because I had
no emails from my family, there was a problem somewhere and I do
not even know what the problem was, but I did not receive any emails
that my family sent me. People from outside did not forward it to me,
maybe they lost it or there was some problem with the internet or
with my address…I don´t know, but it was very sad.” (…) You had no
communication? “We had communication, but it was a mistake of
people who work outside that I had no private communication.”
“There was a moment when I found out that my family had not
received any New Year’ messages…”
“And the most negative, was a conflict with the people outside.
They made a mistake and send an e-mail to a friend of mine to my
superior (he is someone like my father or my boss,) they simply sent a
letter to someone else, by mistake…(…) You are right, it was funny,
but it was not very good.”
In some cases the MCC was not at all responsible for the de-
crease in the amount of information and emails, for instance when
holidays began and the people, who were in close touch everyday
with the crew stopped responding for a while or reduced their
communication (because of other summer activities and a differ-
ent rhythm of the days). Any changes in communication – in terms
of frequency of received e-mail or video messages – however, had
a very negative effect on crew members and made them worried
and nervous. We can propose that informational management is
different in isolation: whereas in life circumstances one can
quickly solve a problem like this by phone, in isolation and con-
finement individuals are helpless in this area and have to wait for a
message from MCC. Lack of responses from the MCC or situations
when MCC responded in a slow and not flexible fashion were ta-
ken personally by the crew and had a frustrating effect on them.
“That was when I was out of contact, when I was getting no letters
and e-mail messages…”
“Negative scene – interaction with the ground – several times,
when I ask something and they did not answer and I felt very really
very emotional like professionally not very good like I was one who
you do not have to paid attention to, and this happened several times,
that was those moments.”
“Usually I would get about four emails from my family and friends
every day, but it was a holiday in August and at the beginning of
September my friends had to go back to work and had loads of work –
they just stopped writing to me and I did not understand why –,
instead of getting four emails a day, I would get maybe one. I felt like I
was cut off, it was a big gap and cut and it was not nice period.”
“It was in July or in April this year. It was a coincidence, because
several people did not write me at the same time, people who nor-
mally kept in touch with me, fell silent; it was a coincidence, but it
was the hardest.”
The narratives also suggest that the unfulfilled requests were
taken more seriously by the crew than they would be in normal
circumstances – outside. Isolation inevitably led the crew to
7
An exception to this was a ‘blackout week’, or another non-standard situation
in the early April 2011, when there was no incoming communication for any crew
members and no outbound messages were delivered, either.
greater dependence on the MCC, which in consequence reduced
their power to control the situation and decreased their sover-
eignty. From the talks it is clear that what each crew member
would normally wave away, was perceived in isolation as more
serious: any delay or error coming from the outside, or failure to
accommodate them, had a considerable impact on the crew.
“Or, maybe the conflict with the MCC, when I asked them for
something ….and no answer, or I asked something and there was just
a polite answer – NO – without any reason. I felt no anger, but I was
confused, that moment I felt down …”
“I had an issue with the outside, I was upset, they made a silly
decision, it was not logical. So I wrote to say this is not logical be-
cause…. And I involved my family in this, because they were the
centre of the subject. The answer just calmed me down, my family
said: do not worry, it is not problem, this is not the end of world…
(…) …. At that moment I realized that everything was OK, nobody
died, we were in good health and had a roof over our heads and were
not hungry …. The decision was not so logical, but I could do nothing
about it and from this moment I took everything more easily, this
experience became a part of me, I behaved and responded to things a
little differently, more normally.”
The difficulties in isolation were likely also due to the limited
possibilities of coping with distress and negative emotions.
Whereas in normal life we can go for a walk, call a friend, we
relieve mental stress by physical activity or can have a hot bath, in
isolation (and even worse, in space) nothing of the kind is possible.
The effects of the limited coping strategies began to show mainly
in the second half of their isolation.
“Outside, when I felt low, I would play basketball, I went to sauna
and relaxed, but inside you took a shower once in ten days ….. When I
felt really depressed, really low I said to me, in three days from now I
have a shower and I forgot everything bad, it had a new beginning, a
shower is very very important …”
“Maybe a lack of interaction with other people, I mean direct in-
teraction, chattering with people, having a natter with people with
different views and attitudes.”
3.10. A question of flight review and media
One of the less anticipated stress factors for some crew mem-
bers was their ‘flight review’ or ‘personal assessment’ after the first
year spent in the Mars-500 simulation. All the crew members
were to give written answers to questions within the queries sent
by the MCC, about what they missed the most after a year of si-
mulation, what they had lost within the year and the like. The
crew in simulation, however, lived first and foremost their ev-
eryday lives, as they said, and they did not look far into the past or
toward the future. According to some, such a task threw them out
of balance somewhat, forced them to think about their present
and future losses and did not bring any use, only the feeling of
sadness and nostalgia to them.
“In June journalist, the family, friends all the people working
around the project send us messages on how great it was that we had
already spent one year inside and only had a few months to go … And
they asked how we foresee the next months, what we think about and
the sort of things … And that was something we just did not do all
that time… As we lived closed in here, we focused only on just a few
days ahead and a few days back … We just lived every day the best
we could, day after day. I found the question ‘What was it like’ and
‘what I miss’ very annoying … We were actually obliged to look at
look all the things we have had missed and lost …”
The media, or exactly the attention from the media, was an-
other stress factor for some crew members. Some of them found
different occasions of taking pictures and sending marketing
photos from the inside space rather irritating and the media at-
tention very stressful.
 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
“The last day of the isolation, when we opened the hatch of the
module and had to get out… and there were hosts of media people
and others, it was a really critical situation for me, it was very
stressful.”
“Well, boys like making pictures, recording, and I just do not like it,
doing it like a show, like PR, I just do not want it, I wanted to earn
money and that’s it… I did not want to promote anything, be a ce-
lebrity… And boys sometimes came up with an idea to make a group
picture, and I really did not feel like it… I did not like it and said no.”
3.11. The final third and the end of simulation
The final few months of the simulation were accompanied by
inevitable difficulties for the crew. As Romain Charles [33] took
down in his diary: ‘I can say without a doubt that, except for a few
colourful days, our months of August and September were dull.’
When further explaining this, Charles states this was due to the
(reduced) communication with the outside world (caused by the
summer holidays), endless performing of the same procedures,
tests, completion of questionnaires and scientific experiments and
ever more difficulty finding motivation for their fulfilment, due to
the menu repeated without variation week after week for the
period of several months.
A positively perceived change introduced a month before the
end of the isolation, was the possibility of direct communication
with the MCC and possible guests. Among the first were family
members and close friends who the crew could call by phone,
which improved the team’s mood and was also an unmistakeable
signal that all the life restrictions were soon coming to an end.
The final week of isolation was filled with intense activities as
the crew described, performed at a hectic pace. There were many
measurements and data collections planned for the last month –
last week. Perhaps all scientific teams wanted to get the data after
the year and a half of isolation, to compare it with the data from
the initial state. This meant a large amount of work for the crew
involving completion of questionnaires and performing experi-
mental procedures. Most crew members also embarked on a
‘spring cleaning’ of their cabins and module to get ready for ‘re-
ceiving visitors’. The fast pace of work brought exhaustion and
possibly also exasperation and nervousness into the team. This
may have caused perhaps the only clash that occurred during the
final week on the simulation. The petty argument, probably re-
sulting from the emotional strain among the crew, concerned the
signing of group photos.
“At the end of the isolation I could not do anything anymore, I was
just reading, killing time, I did not learn anything and I could not even
concentrate well enough on my free time activities…”
“The last week was strange, we felt a lot of pressure from the
outside … We even had an argument in the crew because of photos
and their signing. Some boys prepared a lot of pictures, but others did
not want to sign them…I think it happened because the last month
had been so full of work, we had to complete so many questionnaires,
we were running out of patience and wanted to share our complaints
with someone, or I wanted to complain about why so many things
were planned for the last week, toward the end of the experiment…”
Some crew members admitted that the final days of the iso-
lation had been emotionally draining. Pressure from the outside
was felt inside the module, the tension before the end was
growing. Everything the crew had known for the past year and a
half was to change very quickly. For the first time from the be-
ginning of the simulation the crew turned their thoughts to the
future and the life outside. Questions like: What will it be like out
there? What has changed and how will things be when I go out of
the experiment? Will they take me back to work? How has the
relationship with my partner changed and how is it going to
change? and more must have passed through every crew
187
member’s mind.
“The few days before the end of simulation were very emotional.
We were thinking about what it would be like out there… Now we
are working together day and night and then… Is it going to be rather
difficult, or will I feel happy to see my family and friends? I look
forward to the internet, sure, but what will it feel like? A lot of things
were going through my mind, positive and negative…”
“I have only lost my professional practice, I thought I would lose
my friends but I have found out I have not. I have lost my professional
skills, that’s it.”
As the crew decided on earlier, in the last ten days they started
to count down the time to the end of the simulation. When they
counted to ten, the door to the module opened and the longest
experimental simulation of a flight to Mars was over.
4. Discussion and conclusion
Based on the evidence and analysis of the diaries and narratives
of the Mars-500 project participants, we may conclude that this
small group handled a simulated interplanetary flight in good
psychological shape. Our investigation showed that the task was
by no means an easy one and the crew was forced to adapt to the
discomfort associated with confinement, restriction of food, in-
formation, the lack of fresh air, the absence of nature and sunlight,
and separation from their loved ones amongst other things. Our
qualitative investigation showed several relatively common,
though important findings. The investigation has demonstrated
that crew members qualitatively differentiated between three
periods of the simulation (the journey to Mars, Mars, the way
back) up to eight periods of the simulation (the beginning; the
technical and social adaptation; the first down; the celebrations;
Mars period; the way back and the second down; the last week of
simulation; and the end). Several studies have suggested mood
and performance decline after the midpoint of an expedition
[8,34–36] and based on the narratives of crew members we can
add to the list of critical periods also their mission life review (one
year inside the module) and the last week of the mission. The final
week of isolation was exhausting due to the necessary require-
ments of completing the simulation. However the ‘anniversary
stress’ was further enhanced by MCC by pressurising the crew to
think about their present and future losses after one year inside
the module. Personal assessments should be viewed as a negative
inference with the crew norms, rules, and taboos; negative ques-
tioning especially can lead crew members to ruminate and engage
in negative thinking, possibly meaning that daily hassles become
serious problems [39].
Conquering Mars and the Martian period was the peak ex-
perience of the simulated flight. The crew took the Martian epi-
sode particularly seriously and stepping out onto the surface of
Mars put extreme pressure on everyone. Their collective ambition
to succeed was enormous.
The narratives show that there were many small events that
made the crew active, enthusiastic and willing to find bright, po-
sitive outcomes of their isolation [34]. The analysis proved that
celebrations, whether of birthdays or public holidays, played a
very positive role for the crew. Rituals associated with celebrations
enabled them to consolidate their cohesion and strengthen re-
lationships, as well as developing a mental connection with the
people and the culture they came from. Celebrations functioned as
a factor of cohesion [40] and as an important protective and sa-
lutogenic factor which reduced anxiety and the negative experi-
ences of monotony: rituals and celebrations repeatedly and reg-
ularly uplifted the crew when their enthusiasm was low. Moreover
celebrations are connected with making and creating new things
(a Christmas tree, presents etc.) and therefore visible and
188 I. Poláčková Šolcová et al. / Acta Astronautica 126 (2016) 178–189
controllable results (quite rare during simulation of flight to Mars
[19]) and could help crew members to beat the monotony by
doing something just for themselves and also to cut their mono-
tonous schedule into a few visibly different periods.
The investigation has shown that increased attention needs to
be paid to communication and handling the transfer of informa-
tion between the crew and the ground [4,19,37]. Information is a
highly valued commodity in isolation and the lack of it can lead to
a craving for it in various situations which has a strong negative
impact on the crew. The crew not being in control of information
flow can easily become a serious frustration and errors in com-
munication or a lack of communication from the people outside is
hugely magnified in isolation [4]. However, one of the significant
agents relieving information deprivation turned out to be the
cultural heterogeneity of the crew, where each member became an
immediate source of fresh or current information for the rest. The
cultural diversity among individual crew members was, para-
doxically to language barriers [37,38], the facilitator of commu-
nication and at the same time a distraction which moderated the
impact of the lack of information from outside.
Cultural heterogeneity was viewed as positive factor that
helped overlap information gap; however we can extrapolate that
cultural heterogeneity was also a source of learning and facilitated
personal growth of crew members [41,42].
An important outcome of the Mars-500 project is a seemingly
banal finding on the significance of food within long-term studies
or space flights. Food became probably the greatest problem in
isolation: a consistent set of meals and very limited variability or
variation of the menu and a lack of culturally compatible dishes
caused greater difficulties and discomfort to the crew than we
would probably have expected [19]. At the same time food became
the main topic in communication between crew members, a
bridge leading to other topics, a ‘lightning rod’ of negative emo-
tions or nervousness – maybe even a point for displacement,
coping strategies etc. We suppose that food will play a substantial
role in future space flights as an agent for improving the mood of
the crew.
Overall the Mars-500 project brought some seemingly ordin-
ary, but very valuable findings. As the project reached its end, it
produced relevant data for all the research teams engaged with it.
Should we miss in the available data some more dynamic, dra-
matic elements, or conflicts, disputes and conciliation in the story,
we find satisfaction in the very ordinariness and even simplicity of
the data, which allowed fundamental things to stand out. The
Mars-500 project is marked by achieving the smooth (though not
easy) course of the experiment, and so we can appreciate how
important the role of everyday disgruntlement over the quality of
food is as well as how language barriers can facilitate a greater
sensitivity toward the feelings of others and how cultural diversity
can be a contribution to coping with stress or deprivation. It is also
clearly important to maintain cultural traditions even in a module
virtually conquering a faraway planet.
Acknowledgements
Work on this paper was assisted by the institutional support of
the Czech Academy of Sciences RVO 68081740 and was created as
a part of Strategy AV21. We would like to thank to all crew
members from the project Mars-500, and we are extremely
grateful to the IBMP people for their kind help, namely we thank
Alla Vinokhodova and Vadim Gushin.
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