Russian, US Specialists To Simulate Exit On Moon As Part Of SIRIUS Experiment - Cosmonaut

Russian cosmonaut Evgeny Tarelkin on Monday told Sputnik that he and US specialist Reinhold Povilaitis will make a joint "exit" on a simulated lunar surface as part of the international experiment on modeling a flight to the Moon

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2019) Russian cosmonaut Evgeny Tarelkin on Monday told Sputnik that he and US specialist Reinhold Povilaitis will make a joint "exit" on a simulated lunar surface as part of the international experiment on modeling a flight to the Moon.

"The program of the experiment provides for access to the surface of the Moon via a special simulator of the lunar surface. We will go with US [colleague] Reinhold. As of now, one exit is planned, but there may be more in the course," he said.

According to the cosmonaut, the experiment's participants will take soil samples and will remotely control lunar rovers in the course of the work on the simulator. He did not rule out that the experiment's organizers can create an emergency situation during the "exit" to see the response of the experiment's participants.

The 120-day SIRIUS-19 isolation experiment is scheduled to start on March 19 at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian academy of Sciences in Moscow.

It reproduces the main stages of a real space flight to the Moon, including the flight itself, search for a landing site, landing, stay in the Moon's orbit, remote control of the lunar rover that will prepare the base, and return to Earth. The crew, led by Tarelkin, will also include flight engineer Daria Zhidova and doctor Stefania Fedyai, as well as researchers Reinhold Povilaitis, Anastasia Stepanova and Allen Mirkadyrov.

In 2016, the IBMP and NASA signed a cooperation agreement on conducting a series of experiments dubbed SIRIUS. The first stage of the SIRIUS experiment took place in November 2017 and lasted 17 days. After the 120-day stage, an eight-month experiment is expected to be held in late 2019 - early 2020. A year-long simulation is planned to be conducted in 2020-2021. It was reported that there could be three year-long experiments, not one, and that the possibility of conducting a longer experiment was being considered.