At its closest proximity, Mars is still almost 55 million kilometres away from Earth, making communication delays and supply issues between the two worlds unavoidable. This requires crew members to effectively cope with stressful conditions by themselves, with limited autonomous resources available on board.
In 2017 and 2019, two isolation experiments - dubbed 'Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station' (aka SIRIUS) - were conducted across periods of 17 days and four months, respectively, in a facility in Moscow, Russia using international and mixed gender crews.
These missions were designed to study the effects of isolation and confinement on human psychology in order to help prepare for long-duration space exploration beyond Earth.
Researchers have published a paper revealing how the crews’ communication with the outside world in these experiments diminished over time, causing friction initially, followed eventually by...