This week finds me in Greece, more precisely Thessaloniki, where I am trying to prove the theory that work and pleasure can mix!

I am here at the 6th International Conference of Aerospace Medicine, kindly organized by the Greek Aerospace Medical Association, in conjunction with the International Academy of Astronautics.

Given the current world financial climate, and knowing in particular how hard Greece has been hit, I take my hat off to Dr. Chrysoula Kourtidou-Papadeli who we must all thank for organizing and obtaining the funding for this event.

The meeting, which is usually held every two years, brings together many leading names from the world of aerospace medicine and this year is no exception. Speakers will include ESA astronaut Frank De Winne whose first Space flight was in 2002, and Dr. Chiaki Mukai, the first female Japanese astronaut who flew in 1994, to name but a couple – with the collective experience of those involved being immeasurable.

And all taking place in a city bathed in Greek sunshine – always a bonus! 

A European Space Agency (ESA) press release last week signals a call for new proposals from you scientists out there to submit proposals for experiments to be conducted during the 54th Parabolic Flight campaign, to take place in Spring 2011.

ESA has been providing such research opportunities for over 25 years now, with the A300 Zero-G wide-body airliner having been used for the last ten. The A300 is one of the most modern and largest aircraft to be used for parabolic flights, but the difference with this campaign is that flights will no longer be restricted to simulation of microgravity only.

Recent new certification now means that on offer will also be flights including parabolas that produce reduced gravity levels of 0.16 g for approximately 23 seconds, and 0.38 g for around 30 seconds. These gravity levels equate to the conditions found on the Moon and Mars respectively.

But you’ll have to hurry – proposals need to be submitted by 31st August 2010, although those received after that date are likely to be considered for future campaigns. 

Needless to say, my application is already submitted!

Want to read more details? Then click the link below to take you to the ESA website:

http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMCQH5OJCG_index_0.html

European space probe Rosetta has had a ‘close encounter’ with the biggest asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft in an attempt to find out more about what the asteroid is made of.

The European Space Agency (ESA) craft named Rosetta, designed to chase comets, flew within 1,900 miles of the 83 mile wide asteroid Lutetia to get some close-up pictures of the surface. Scientists have puzzled over the composition of Lutetia (the Latin name for Paris) since it was discovered some 150 years ago, and their aim is to work out whether the asteroid, which is currently more than 282 million miles from Earth, is either made of rock and carbon or is a metallic one.

Hopefully this new information gained by Rosetta during its fly-by will provide scientists with new information about the composition of giant asteroids and how the solar system formed.

More importantly, they also hope to gain a new perspective on the potential threat such asteroids may pose to the Earth in the future, and thus develop strategies that might be able to divert them from a collision course.

Find out more by taking a look at the ESA website.

The 6 crewmembers of the Mars 500 mission waved goodbye to the outside world for the last time this week (June 3rd 2010) at the start of what will be 520 days of isolation as they try to simulate as accurately as possible a manned flight to Mars and back.

Diego Urbina and Romain Charles from Europe, Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexey Sitev, Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Mikhail Sinelnikov from Russia and Wang Yue from China will live and work as the astronauts would in reality, also eating the same food and exercising in an identical manner as crew members onboard the International Space Station.

Their days will be divided up equally between work, leisure and rest time, and as well as an 18 month supply of food and equipment on board the ‘spacecraft’ they have taken films, books, games and musical instruments with which to entertain themselves.

The men will have to rapidly adjust both mentally and physically to being contained within a closed environment with restricted space, and a regime of daily exercise for up to 2 hours will be important to maintain physical condition. Unfortunately though they will only be able to shower once a week so a poor sense of smell would probably be a good thing!

The Mars 500 experiment will be excellent for simulating the living conditions, work routine and stresses of living as a small group in a confined space and should therefore give some valuable feedback and data. However, there are important factors that cannot be simulated in this way on Earth, such as the effects of long term exposure of astronauts to radiation and microgravity. It is imperative for the safety of crew members on any future long-term manned mission that we gain a better understanding of the physiological processes that lie behind such effects.

8th April 2010 saw the successful launch in Kazakhstan of the European Space Agency (ESA) sponsored CryoSat-2 satellite.

The original launch of the first version of the £100 million satellite ended in disaster, back in 2005 when the Russian launch rocket carrying it failed, and plunged into the Arctic Ocean.

CryoSat-2 will now sit in its polar orbit and send back data about how the ice caps are reacting to global change. The melting ice of the polar regions is considered a matter of great environmental concern, with future implications for ocean currents, sea levels, and the entire global climate.

This satellite is part of ESA's 'Living Planet Programme' which focuses attention not outwards to Space itself, but, instead seeks to look inwards to see what impact and effects human activity is having on natural planet Earth processes. 

Think you could cope with being locked up in 4 windowless, metal, interlocking modules measuring less than 550 cubic metres, 24 hours a day, every day, for nearly 18 months? If that's not bad enough then how about sharing that small space with 5 other people that you barely know.

This is exactly what 6 lucky or brave or foolhardy (depending on your point of view) people will be doing from May this year, all in the name of science. But if mankind really wants to conduct a manned flight to Mars, then this is exactly what will be needed. 

Mars500, a joint project run by the European Space Agency and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems will simulate the space flight to Mars and back again, keeping everything as true to life as possible. Once locked into the capsule the 'crew' will only have personal contact with each other, plus voice contact with a simulated mission control and occasionally from family members - and even then with a 20 minute delay built in to simulate the real time delay of a Mars mission.

The assignment will begin with all the food on-board needed for the entire duration of the experiment, the diet similar to that of the crew on the International Space Station (ISS) - and they will have to stick to rationing to make it last. The crew will be given tasks to do such as maintenance, daily exercise, and scientific experiments, plus the occasional emergency simulation thrown in for good measure. All team members will be monitored throughout the mission with recordings taken of medical, psychological and physical signs.

All 6 candidates have now been selected with the final composition being 2 Europeans, 1 Chinese, and 3 Russians, and don't you just hope that they all get along well together for the sake of their sanity! 

Click on the ESA link to discover more:
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Mars500/index.html