Tetyana Delaney, Ph.D., a professor of biology at St. Joseph’s College, is among the dozen people in the world taking part in the SIRIUS (Scientific International Research In a Unique terrestrial Station) 21 Mars mission.
Dr. Delaney was chosen by NASA to participate in the exclusive project that’s helping them prepare to send scientists to Mars, recording how the SIRIUS 21 crew responds psychologically and physiologically to isolation and confinement, as well as additional stressors while working as a unit.
The mission is a collaboration between NASA and Russia’s Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP).
“Who wouldn’t want to go, or at least try to be part of a Mars mission?!” Dr. Delaney said of her involvement in the project.
“Just hearing about it and reading so much information about other rovers — the machines that were sent to Mars,” Dr. Delaney continued. “We as biologists think about those sequences and what we can do, and here’s an opportunity to somehow be a part of that.”
Dr. Delaney is now in Moscow, training for the eight-month mission set to start in November. Six of the 12 participants will move forward in the project once training is complete.
“They are in the process of collecting our biomedical parameters (all possible biological samples) at normal conditions first, as a base line,” Dr. Delaney explained. “Then they collect them with different stress factors — from intense exercise to cognitive tests, memorizing maps, complicated flight patterns in space and spatial orientation.
“So far, everything is very interesting and very new to me. But at the same time it is A LOT,” Dr. Delaney added. “I now know what astronauts are going through.”
Check out photos from her training below:
