THE MARS-500 CREW IN DAILY LIFE ACTIVITIES: ETHOLOGICAL STUDY

摘要

A Mars mission is a new challenge for scientific investigators in the space field. What would be the behavioralprofile of an interplanetary crew with long-duration social isolation and spatial restriction? The current studyaddresses this question with the first ethological data from the Mars-500 experiment. It took place in Moscow,Russia from June 3, 2010 to November 4, 2011. It was designed to simulate the living and working conditions of anisolated and confined crew over 250 days for reaching Mars, 30 days for Mars orbiting with Mars landing and 240days for returning to Earth. The Mars-500 crew was composed of three Russians, two Europeans and one Chinese.The Mars-500 facilities comprised four hermetically sealed, interconnected modules and a Martian surface module.We applied the ethological method based on observation, description and quantification of the individual and interindividualbehaviors in terms of personal actions, visual interactions, object interactions, body interactions, facialexpressions and collateral acts. These events were scored on the Observer XT? software, from video recordingsmade every two weeks at breakfast time inside the habitat module. We found the following results: a diminishingcollective time from the first phase corresponding to the 250-day trip to Mars to the second phase corresponding tothe 240-day return to Earth; 35-day cycles then 70-day cycles of high duration of personal actions within thesephases; periodic oscillations of duration of visual interactions; increasing occurrences of collateral acts over the full520-day journey; decreasing then increasing occurrences of facial expressions with temporal points of decrements,around day 159 and day 355, after 6 months and one year of simulation. We discuss the findings with regard to aMars mission scenario. Time has a major impact on the behavioral profile, as shown by indicators of physical andpsychological states of fatigue, stress, well being and good spirit. The interplanetary crew follows phasic, cyclic,periodic and punctual behavioral changes in a temporal dynamic as nominal states of adaptation.