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US refrains from participation in joint space experiment SIRIUS-2023 with Russia

The annual SIRIUS-2023 isolation experiment will take place in Moscow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Bio-Medical Problems

MOSCOW, April 11. /TASS/. US representatives have refrained from participating in the joint international isolation experiment SIRIUS with Russia in 2023, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Bio-Medical Problems (IBMP), Oleg Orlov, told a news conference on Tuesday.

"We are to go ahead with the SIRIUS program in November. We are starting a comprehensive experiment - a year-long isolation of the SIRIUS crew. The project was conceived as a joint program with NASA. There missions are to be accomplished. The current political situation has caused adjustments to these plans. Our US counterparts have not quitted the project. They preferred to refrain from participation. However, we continue to work with a wide range of partners and expect the experiment to continue as an international one," Orlov said.

The annual SIRIUS-2023 isolation experiment will take place in Moscow at the RAS IBMP in 2023-2024.

Experiment’s profile

The SIRIUS experiment (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) is an international project, organized by the IBMP of the Russian Academy of Sciences and NASA HRP (Human Research Program). The experiment was conceived as a simulation of a crewed flight into deep space.

The goal of isolation studies is to model significant events that may occur during the space crew’s long stay on the space station and when landing on a different planet. With the help of a series of experiments, scientists plan to solve the problems of medical and biological support for flights to the Moon and the crew’s stay on the Moon’s orbiter, as well as to try to minimize the risks of human error during long interplanetary flights (including those to Mars).

The SIRIUS project envisages a whole series of isolation experiments. The first one took place in November 2017, when a test crew spent 17 days in isolation. In 2018-2019 the isolation experiment lasted four months. In July 2022, an eight-month long SIRIUS-2021 experiment ended in Moscow. By 2028, three 12-month-long experiments are to be staged to simulate flights into deep space.

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