For eight days, the female volunteers will live inside a wood-paneled suite of rooms at Moscow’s Institute of Bio-medical Problems, renowned for its wacky research into the psychological and physical effects of space travel.
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“Those who will take part in an experiment are not concerned there won’t be any men in their crew”, she said.
All-women Russian crew prepares for 2029 Moon mission, with the six participants already locked in the confinement of a mock spaceship.
The volunteers of this experiment also include a scientific, a psychologist and a doctor.
Although the Institute ran a similar test in 2010 with an all-male crew, Sergei Ponomaryov, the experiment’s supervisor, said it would be extra-special to see how women interact together under such conditions.
On Tuesday, Russia’s space agency declared its first lunar manned mission that will settle the country’s permanent moon base.
Getty ImagesRussian Space Station crew member Elena Serova side-eyes something unrelated earlier this year. The women might even be homemakers, but in the capacity of this experiment, they’re professionals devoting their time to further the progress of the human race. At the press conference where the idea of experimenting on an all-female space crew was explained in details, one of the first questions was how will female astronauts cope without makeup?
“We are very attractive without makeup”, parried participant Darya Komissarova.
Her colleague Anna Kussmaul was more direct: “We are doing work”. He added, ‘We consider the future of space belongs equally to men and women and unfortunately we need to catch up a bit after a period when unfortunately, there haven’t been too many women in space.’, reports Daily Mail.
After its initial flight, the plan is to have the spacecraft dock with the global Space Station in 2023 and then the agency will send an unmanned mission to the Moon in 2025, said Solntsev.
They plan to spend their 1 1/2 hours per day of free time watching films, reading and playing board games.
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Two weeks ago Prof Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute of Moscow, said: “We have to go to the moon”.
