Solntsev revealed today that the agency has started building the spacecraft for this mission with first flight into space expected to take place in 2021.
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“It’s interesting for us to see what is special about the way a female crew communicates”, he said.
Sergei Ponomarev, the scientific director of Moon-2015, said: “It will be interesting to see how well they get on with each other, and how well they are able to perform tasks”.
The isolation experiment “Moon-2015” simulates an eight-day-long flight from the Earth to the Moon and aims at testing the psychology and physiology of the female organism.
The mock spacecraft is equipped with cameras and the participants will be monitored remotely by doctors and psychologists round the clock.
Russian Federation sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963 but has lagged behind since.
It was criticised at the time for failing to select any women for the research – this latest experiment is created to redress the balance.
There’s never been an all-female crew on the ISS.
Similar to the focus placed on cosmonaut Yelena Serova’s appearance when she prepared for her mission to the ISS a year ago, the six volunteers for the Insitute’s mission fielded sexist questions at a press conference prior to boarding their shuttle, where they were asked how they would “cope” without wearing makeup for eight days.
“We are very handsome without makeup”, parried participant Darya Komissarova.
Her colleague Anna Kussmaul was more direct: “We are doing work. When you’re doing your work, you don’t think about men and women”. It will then dock with the global Space Station in 2023 and make an unmanned trip to the moon in 2025.
So, too, is male company left behind, they add, assessing busy workdays ahead and leisure hours constrained for the time being to reading, games to play and films to watch.
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“So far I can’t imagine what would rattle us”.
