SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) is a series of on-land iso­la­tion exper­i­ments mod­el­ling long-term space­flight in order to assess the psy­chophys­i­o­log­i­cal effects of iso­la­tion on a crew and pre­pare for long-dura­tion space­flights, such as a trip to Mars. An 8‑month-long iso­la­tion study com­menced in Moscow on Nov 4^th, 2021, where a crew of 6 people (from Roscosmos, NASA and space agency of Arabic Emirates) went into a spe­cial facil­i­ty mod­el­ling a space­craft, remain­ing there until July 2022  sim­u­lat­ing an extra­plan­e­tary jour­ney and par­tic­i­pat­ing in 70 exper­i­ments pre­pared by inter­na­tion­al research teams.

As part of a DLR spon­sored study imple­ment­ed by Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and led by PI Alex Stahn  a VR expe­ri­ence was designed to aug­ment sen­so­ry stim­u­la­tion during pro­longed iso­la­tion and confinement.The approach is specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed at astro­nauts to mit­i­gate some of the psy­cho­log­i­cal stres­sors asso­ci­at­ed with long-dura­tion explorato­ry space mis­sions. The VR expe­ri­ence was designed to their con­nec­tion to Earth and human­ity as well as the impor­tance of their own mis­sion. The ele­ments of the vir­tu­al expe­ri­ence were inspired by research on self-tran­scen­dent phe­nom­ena such as med­i­ta­tion, wit­ness­ing vast nature, awe-inspir­ing aurora and solar eclipse, and the overview effect that have been shown to have pos­i­tive effects on behav­ior, mental well-being, and health.

[mediatags]proj–sirius[/mediatags]

Here’s the recent GlobalNews cov­er­age on our SIRIUS Earthgazing project: [note that this project was cre­at­ed by a whole team of people as described in the below cred­its, not just one PhD student]

Here’s how Alex Kitson explained the users’ jour­ney in her recent TEDx talk

More project details of SIRIUS

SIRIUS book­let .pdf

record­ing of Experiment Completion Ceremony on July 3, 2022:

Contributions

Artists Credits

Artists: Noah Miller, John Desnoyers-Stewart, Katerina Stepanova, Ashu Adhikari, Bernhard Riecke, Patrick Pennefather, Alex Kitson, Denise Quesnel ■ Experience Design and Development: Noah Miller, John Desnoyers-Stewart, Ashu Adhikari ■ Direction: Bernhard Riecke ■ Narrative and Concept: Katerina Stepanova, John Desnoyers-Stewart, Alex Kitson, Denise Quesnel  ■ Voiceover: Katerina Stepanova ■ Sound Design: Patrick Pennefather 

Publications and exhibits

Media coverage

record­ing of Experiment Completion Ceremony on July 3, 2022:

Support & Acknowledgement

The study is sup­port­ed through DLR grant 50WB1915 and ESA project AO-SIRIUS-2019 (PI: Dr. AC Stahn, Charité Berlin) and addi­tional sup­port SSHRC and NSERC