Russia to include SIRIUS isolation experiment results in cosmonaut training program

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/. Russia’s Cosmonaut Training Center intends to use the results that will be obtained from SIRIUS isolation experiments in its crew training programs, Center Chief Pavel Vlasov said on Tuesday. The international crew of six persons entered the SIRIUS ground-based experimental compound on the territory of the Institute of Biomedical Problems on Tuesday to spend the next 120 days in a simulated flight to the Moon to prepare for future deep space missions. "Some elements from the [SIRIUS] ground-based experiments will in the future be used in crew training and in the performance of flights. We will focus on the aspects that will be revealed here [during the SIRIUS experiments]," he said. SIRIUS experiments are very important in subsequent crew training. They deal with the task of exposing complex situations in lengthy space flights, the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center said. "Eventually, this will allow us to take preventive measures so that this does not occur in a real flight or the acuteness of such manifestations is alleviated," Vlasov explained. "The more this research is conducted, the greater the probability that this will expose the problems, about which no one can say now why this happens and, most importantly, what to do in such situations," he said. Russia’s Cosmonaut Training Center does not plan to purposefully dispatch its cosmonauts for participation in isolation experiments, he noted. "The Cosmonaut Training Center will not purposefully send people there. Today we do not have cosmonauts free from their missions. The schedule is tight enough to withdraw a person [cosmonaut] from a space mission and send him to a four-month experiment," Vlasov said. The SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) experiment will simulate a flight to the Moon: the travel to the Earth’s natural satellite and a flight around it to search for a landing place, the landing of crewmembers for operations on the surface, the stay in the Moon’s orbit and the remote control of a lunar rover to prepare a base and return to Earth. The experiment is being held by the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences jointly with NASA and in cooperation with partners from Germany, France, Italy and other countries. It envisages a series of experiments to prepare for deep space flights. The first of the series of joint Russian-US SIRIUS experiments was held in November 2017 and lasted 17 days. The crew was tasked to conduct over 60 various experiments, ‘capture’ satellites by a manipulator arm and control a rover on the Moon’s surface. Now a four-month isolation experiment has begun and it will be followed by an eight-month experiment that will give way to a twelve-month research. Read more