(Multicom Jingle)
- [Houston] FSC disconnect unable on.
- Copy that Houston.
- [Narrator] Sealed in isolation in a tiny capsule
millions of kilometers from home,
the first manned mission to Mars
would be the greatest test of human mind, body and spirit.
- The longer the mission, the harder the strain is
on the human being,
the greater the risk.
- The last time a human being went to deep space, was 1972.
- [Narrator] Six people would be trapped like rats
for two and a half years.
With no chance of escape.
- Imagine that you are trapped with those people
in one of the small offices where you work,
would you want to be in a room
with those people for years?
- [Narrator] A thousand days of smelling each others sweat,
drinking each other's urine, with no privacy
and nothing to do.
- How are you gonna keep yourself entertained,
how you gonna keep yourself focused?
- [Narrator] The most challenging part of the mission,
would be to prevent the crew from killing themselves
or each other.
If anything goes wrong, they'll be no rescue mission,
the astronauts are alone and they know it.
The fear of death would be constant for 1000 days.
- The astronauts are under no illusion,
they're in a risky business.
- [Narrator] Mental breakdown, sexual tension,
near suicide, mutiny, these are not what ifs,
it's all really happened on missions in space.
Psychologists around the globe agree,
the first crucial step to a successful mission to Mars
is to select a new kind of astronaut.
- [Translator] If we make a mistake in crew selection
then conflicts might arise on board,
these conflicts can kill the crew, just like a disease.
- [Narrator] Our exploration of other worlds begins
inside the human mind.
Seeking ways to identify and control the torment
of isolation, depravation and loneliness.
Work has already begun to solve the Achilles' heal
of the Mars mission.
The human factor.
(dramatic music)
- [Announcer] There is a bulletin from ABC news,
the Apollo 13 spacecraft has had
a serious power supply malfunction
that could case the lunar landing mission
to be terminated early.
- [Narrator] April 1970,
- [Astronaut] Houston we've had a problem.
- [Narrator] Two days after launch,
Apollo 13 is crippled by an explosion.
- [Astronaut] We hit a pretty large bank
so fitted with the carcinogen warning.
- [Narrator] Oxygen and heating systems are knocked out.
- [Astronaut] Negative time, I believe the crew reported.
- [Narrator] An engineering team in mission control
remains in constant contact with the astronauts,
overcoming problem after problem,
to bring three men home alive.
(radio chatters)
The odds against success cannot be calculated.
- [Astronaut] Lets solve the problem and let's not make
it any worse by guessing, let's make sure
we don't blow the whole mission.
- [Narrator] Six days after launch,
human ingenuity triumphs over the menace of space.
- [Houston] And welcome home.
- [Astronaut] Thank you.
(cheers and applauds)
- [Narrator] This heroic, famous story,
will not be repeated on the Mars mission.
The time delay with mission control,
is up to 23 minutes given the distance
traveled through space,
there'll be no real time feedback from mission control.
The crew will have to sort out problems on their own.
(beeps)
- You're going away from the Earth
with no chances of coming back until the two planets
align back, they're not on the same orbit,
the consideration of being very isolated,
going to where no one has gone before
but with no possibility to turn back physically
until a precise time is gonna be completely new,
plus the trip to Mars is gonna be a little boring.
- So what do you have?
You have people floating
through an endless velvetty black void
with nothing in sight.
- [Narrator] The journey to and from the surface
of the red planet back to earth would be a year of boredom.
- It's a power spike in the UTL's.
- This can't be good.
- [Narrator] Then, there's the constant pressure
that something could go wrong.
(radio chatters)
Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut,
who spent a 132 days in space was aboard
the Russian station MIR for the worst fire
in the history of manned orbit.
A ruptured oxygen device, set panels and instruments alight
and toxic smoke filled the station,
there was no window to open, no fire escape,
for 90 seconds the crew fought the blaze,
knowing failure meant certain death.
- [Jerry] The master alarm went off of course,
the smoke filled the station, it was readily apparent
that it was indeed a fire, being a physician
I was very concerned with crew health, we set up,
- [Narrator] The blaze subsided,
but it was a close call.
- That might take place from my assessment,
I don't see where anyone had any serious inhalation damage.
- [Narrator] It's a dire omen for those daring enough
to attempt the voyage to Mars.
- If you will, death is a part of the business,
it's an occupational hazard.
- [Narrator] So what kind of astronaut should be selected
for the mission to Mars?
(dramatic music)
In the beginning of the space age
NASA decided to pick astronauts from the ranks
of military test pilots.
In the 1960s, test pilots were dying at the rate
of one a week, they'd gotten used to the idea
of death on the job.
(booms)
Call it bravery, call it an addiction to danger,
these young men were exactly what NASA needed.
- [Director] Eight, seven, we have a go
for main engine start,
four, three, two, one,
booster ignition and lift off.
- [Narrator] All that changed with the shuttle program,
military daredevils still commanded,
but scientists and school teachers
now orbited the Earth.
Since 1980 the qualifications that NASA
were about physical fitness and specific mission skills.
An expedition to Mars is a whole other ballgame.
- I would say that traditional you know,
lone pilot facing the odds is just not gonna do
really well on a mission to Mars.
- [Narrator] Pat Sandy worked as a psychiatrist
and flight surgeon for NASA in the 1980s.
- The same way that engineers pay attention
to even the smallest screw in a spacecraft structure,
we need to pay attention
to how human personalities organize,
how the human psyche is structured and how that psyche
is going to interact with other human psyches.
- [Narrator] Canadian Dave Williams is a NASA astronaut,
he's helping the agency find the Mars generation
of space traveler.
- It's very interesting that when you look at an astronauts
and cosmonauts worldwide, these are individuals
who love flying, they love mechanical devices
they love working on computers, working on their cars,
they're really into the new technology,
well right now we're looking for the next generation
of astronaut, we're calling these people
exploration astronauts and I think these folks
are gonna have to have a number
of what we call generic skills.
The capability of repairing a rover for instance,
repairing a spacesuit, maintaining a spacesuit,
troubleshooting or rebuilding a computer.
- You do need a Mr Fixit man, you need the right tools,
you need human ingenuity,
you know, you better take some duct tape along with you,
you know, because you cannot call back
and say hey I need a part.
(thwacks)
- [Narrator] These are the first humans to embark
on the most incredible and dangerous voyage
into the darkest reaches of space.
These two young Russian men,
could be our first ambassadors to Mars.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] In any case, this will rank
with the first flight to space and the flight to the moon.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator 2] Well it does not matter which country
is the first one, the most important thing
is that humanity broke through and made such a big step.
That we proved that we're capable of flying,
not just around Earth, but also travel in space.
A long way from the boundaries of Earth
and visit other planets.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Narrator] The Russians are putting their faith
in their genes.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] They're part of a cosmonaut dynasty.
They're father's were very famous cosmonauts
who in their time undertook very memorable
and challenging space missions.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Narrator] Whatever method is used to select the crew
to go to Mars, space agencies across the world
know these astronauts will need
to be psychologically stronger
than any other before them.
In Russia the selection process is not so much about skill,
as it is about stamina.
Valerie Pulyakov holds the world record, 438 days in orbit.
Now he's leading Russians search for the Mars team.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] I believe that the extreme conditions
of this flight, especially the time in a closed spaceship
means that we're looking for very special human qualities,
these will not be ordinary people.
They must all get along under the most difficult conditions.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Narrator] The Russian Mars program
conducts rigorous isolation tests.
Roman Romanenko is being put through his paces,
isolated, forced to stay awake for up to three days
and subjected to an endless battery of meaningless tasks.
It's a controlled version of the mindless routine
of the voyage to Mars.
If Romanenko cracks under the pressure, his dreams
of going to Mars will be over
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] We need to study thoroughly
the qualities the astronauts character,
to do so we must violate the major laws of life and mind.
For example, the regime of nonstop activities
could last for 64 or 72 hours.
- [Narrator] The Russians have decades of experience
with long term missions in space.
Through trial and error, Russia built the MIR space station,
giving Cosmonauts and astronauts the chance
to stay in earth orbit for months at a stretch.
Jerry Linenger thought he was mentally tough,
until his mission on MIR.
- I was actually shocked of my time on MIR
of how isolated and how cutoff and stuck with myself
that I felt during that time,
and also of how vulnerable I was.
And I saw in my crew mates some pretty serious
psychological problems developing.
People kind of going off the cliff and not able
to function at the level I'm sure
they wanted to function at.
- [Narrator] For the new breed of astronaut,
everyday life in the confined quarters of the Mars spaceship
could turn into a modern day torture chamber.
(dramatic music)
(exciting music)
Science Fiction makes space travel look easy.
This is more like the harsh reality the Mars astronauts
will have to cope with.
- [Astronaut] I'm into the node,
this way I see another treadmill,
the bathroom, the toilets, things like that.
- [Narrator] Life on board is a living hell,
crowded, noisy and dirty.
Jerry Linenger spent five months
on the Russian space station,
he paints a pretty grim picture of life
in close quarters.
There are no showers in space.
- Slightly different area
but this is where we do our,
the other two cosmonauts did their cleaning up,
little mirror here of course.
Even in best case scenario, you might end up
with a little towelette with a little,
three or four drops of water on it.
You exercise in space to try to keep your body strong,
you get hot just like you do on Earth
and your shower consists of that.
We would float by each other throughout the day
and you'd sort of fly high
and you know the guy fly low 'cause you don't want
to get too close to a guy
who hasn't showered in five months.
- [Narrator] There's worse to come.
Water is mass and engineers on earth
must keep it to a minimum.
- And the toilet itself is over this way
and it's a very simple design,
and Mike wants to,
- [Narrator] Which means the astronauts must purify
and drink their own urine on the long voyage to Mars.
- Something about drinking your own urine,
is you know, there's just something that doesn't
sound so good about that, you convert that urine,
they tell you it's pure, it's good stuff it's now water,
but there's still something that tells you
you just don't want to drink that stuff.
I finally got to the point, I said, you know,
to be an astronaut I can drink my urine.
But I cannot drink my crew mates urine.
And that's about it for the toilet,
sleeping bags sitting right here.
This just happens to be the commanders sleep station.
- [Narrator] Smells and drinking your urine
are just irritations compared with the real hardships
of sleep deprivation.
- Sleep is critical no matter where humans go
and if they don't get it,
performance deteriorates very rapidly.
- [Narrator] There's no up or down in space,
astronauts strap themselves into sleeping bags
held down by Velcro.
Noise levels within MIR and the international space station
were at times intolerable.
The Mars mission depends on a quieter craft.
- When people stay awake more then 18 hours,
they tend to have psycho motor impairments
equivalent to when they are inebriated or drunk
at least by legal blood alcohol limits.
- [Narrator] Deprived of sleep,
the risk of accident on the Mars mission will be high.
Astronauts have been telling scientists for decades
that they sleep less in space, the problem is,
no one can work it out.
- It could be workload, it could be noise level,
it may be the disruption of circadian clocks
in space flight, all of those things
are known to do that.
So we're still not entirely sure of all the reasons
sleep is altered in space flight.
- You take your canned food for example,
- [Narrator] Jerry Linenger warns of another
important human need, food cravings obsessed him
the entire time on the MIR space station.
- 10 minutes to heat up a good sized can of tuna.
I would have killed for a glass of milk,
a bag of pretzels, I would have just killed
for anything different.
- And there's not even hot water to reheat this thing.
- Eating mush is bad,
cold mush intolerable.
- [Narrator] Unlike MIR, in the ISS,
there will be no resupply ship for the Mars crew.
They will be taking all their food with them,
the equivalent of 450 refrigerators worth.
NASA takes Linenger's complaints seriously,
and is looking for solutions for the Mars mission.
- Everything points to the fact that food
not only provides that nutritional effect
but also psychological well being.
- [Narrator] Experts at NASA food lab
are cooking up the Mars menu.
- What's the first thing we all complain about
when we go to school?
The food, now the cafeteria food is never good,
so we need to make sure that we have
the highest acceptability food system available
so this is all they're going to have.
So we are trying to provide for the crew a variety
of food so that they will find enough foods
that will make them happy and what they want.
- [Narrator] What foods the astronauts don't bring
they will grow, experiments conducted on the space shuttle
show that fresh vegetables are not just good
for the body they're good for the spirit.
At the University of Gwelf in Canada,
low pressure chambers replicate a spacecraft environment
to grow vegetables.
- Anyone can operate for two weeks on freeze dried
camping foods but if you're looking
for a periods of months of living of transit
providing those fresh food and supplements
to the diet will have a beneficial psychological
and social effect of that connection with your diet.
- I can tell you when a resupply ship came up
they always stuffed a few oranges and lemons
in the front of that resupply ship.
We were just all gathering the lemons and sniffing 'em
and oh my god the smells of the Earth.
- [Narrator] Food, sleep, hygiene,
these basic human needs will be a luxury
on the Mars voyage.
But living together for so long,
might be the most difficult challenge to solve.
(dramatic music)
(exciting music)
On a voyage to Mars, rebellion is a real possibility,
even contact with mission control can become
a source of tension.
- Hey guys, sorry about the longer than normal delay
but believe me, we haven't been idle down here.
- When you go into isolation and confinement,
your world now narrows down
into this little tiny space,
and you are now completely dependent for communications,
resources, logistics, on mission control.
- We're still baffled by all of this as much as you are.
- This creates a tremendously complex dynamic
where you need these people but you feel
that they don't understand you.
(radio chatter)
- [Narrator] It happened in 1973,
a NASA sky lab, too many orders from the ground
and the crew went on strike.
It was a serious break down of command and control.
(radio chatter)
A similar strike happened on the Russian MIR station
in the 80s.
- That's a whole other aspect of interpersonal skills.
There's the us versus them quality
of the people in space versus the people at home.
- [Narrator] These missions were measured in just weeks
not the years of a Mars odyssey.
(dramatic music)
- What is that?
- [Narrator] To avoid these problems,
the Mars astronaut will need communication skills
as much as technical ones.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] The medical and psychological characteristics
of the astronauts will play a crucial role
in selection of the crew.
- [Narrator] Canadians Dave Williams
and Chris Hatfield both became astronauts in 1992.
Hatfield has been on both MIR
and the international space station.
He has the sort of hands on experience
that can help Williams find a crew for Mars.
- It's gonna be interesting to see what we decide
is the right mix of both skills
and people to go.
- Yeah.
- Because you know, do we need one doctor,
four doctors, no doctors, do we need one test pilot,
four, none, do we want it to be all men, all women?
- NASA's thinking of a crew of six, maybe seven people.
There will be both men and women aboard,
which raises a new question, what happens if astronauts
mix business with pleasure?
- How you holding up?
- I'm holding up.
- A NASA shuttle astronaut is in a Florida jail
this morning, charged in alleged kidnapping plot.
- In 2007, space shuttle astronaut Lisa Nowak
was dismissed from NASA after being charged
with attempted kidnapping.
Her target was a female Air Force officer
who was competing for the affections
of another astronaut.
- Top NASA officials says that Lisa Nowak
showed no signs of instability before her arrest this week.
For now the agency's taking a look at itself
seeing if it might.
- [Narrator] The press descended on NASA
with questions about psychological testing.
- More extensive psychological examinations
are required for long duration flights.
Astronauts also undergo extensive medical examinations
when they return from space.
- [Narrator] Nowak's case unveiled NASA's position
on sex, among astronauts.
It's okay, as long as it doesn't get
in the way of the mission.
- We treat astronauts as we do other federal employees
within the federal government
but we do not meddle into the private lives
of astronauts or other employees within NASA.
- It happens everywhere on Earth
it'll happen on the way to Mars,
and just stop worrying about it.
Just let people who have the right skill set
right across the board go and the other problems
will take care of themselves.
- As for the sex with himself, there's no problem.
I talked with Kordakova, a sweet Russian woman in space
and her reply to this question was,
absolutely perfect, she said, all depends with who.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] To give you an example,
when I flew to the space station, Valerie Pulyakof
had already been there for nine months.
An all male company and then suddenly a woman appeared.
As Valerie told me, Yelena, now that you're here,
I even have to shave every day.
On the other hand, we're better behaved now,
we swear less and take better care of our appearance.
So I'd say indeed, women would play an important role
in long duration space travel to Mars.
- [Narrator] The Russians aren't so sure
that liberal sexual values suit a Mars mission.
In 1999 they conducted a 240 day isolation experiment.
The subjects were would be astronauts, all male,
except one woman from Canada, Judith Lapierre.
A few weeks into the four month experiment,
at a New Years party, the Russian commander
French kissed Lapierre, the kiss caused
an international incident.
- If this represents reality in space,
I think we have a problem we have to work on,
some of those issues to solve it
before we're really in space.
- [Narrator] She accused him of sexual harassment.
The commander said she failed to understand Russian customs.
- Judith truly, truly felt she had been violated,
and when talking to the Russian he truly,
didn't even understand why a big deal was made of this.
I do believe the kiss, sexuality,
this whole area had elements of cultural differences.
- [Narrator] Lapierre stuck it out for the remainder
of the experiment with a lock on her compartment door.
The Russians now say that no women
will be selected for their Mars mission.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] I think it is not a good idea
to have a mixed crew, men and woman
on board the flight to Mars.
I've flown with Yelena Kordikova,
she performed extremely well as a human being
as a professional,
but on a flight as long as the flight to Mars,
the presence of a woman might cause
psychological problems and tensions.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Narrator] Antarctica is Earth's best analogy
for a Mars mission.
Earlier in the 20th century,
women frequently accompanied men on the voyages
to the poles, sex was considered a healthy part
of expedition life.
- In many polar expeditions there has long
been a tradition, ever since women have been spending
the winter, in the antarctic
of what I euphemistically call bachelor marriages,
these are generally short term relationships
that last during the time on the expedition itself
and then generally dissolve when the expedition ends.
- [Narrator] In 1915, Ernest Shackleton's expedition
came to a halt when his ship became trapped in the ice.
28 men were now fighting for their lives
knowing that no one would rescue them.
Survival depended on their teamwork.
And Shackleton's leadership.
- Shackleton made very wise decisions
in the selection of his crew,
he could assign the right task to the right people
and I think we've learned a lot about what a mission
to Mars is going to be liked based on the experience
that we've had in polar environments.
- [Narrator] Antarctic temperatures plummet
to minus 35 degrees, flesh will freeze in seconds,
even today, rescue is all but impossible until spring.
Like Mars, the astronauts crews live
in close quarters, isolation and confinement
can bring out strong emotions even violence.
- There was one famous case, about half dozen years ago
in which a member of the cooking staff
took a claw hammer and assaulted a couple
of his fellow crew members.
There's always the possibility that conflicts
can escalate to life threatening situations
where someone may assault another crew member
and that those situations have to be recognized
well in advance and dealt with in some way.
- [Narrator] Successful polar workers are self motivated
and resourceful, these exploration skills
are exactly what Dave Williams is looking for.
- If your whole food supply has been destroyed
by some catastrophe, getting upset about it
doesn't help the situation.
So there are personality types of some people
who are very successful explorers.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Who are the six men and women
who can get along in a cramped space
the size of a small apartment for years,
even if NASA and the Russians find solutions,
there's no easy fix that can combat the human factor
so scientists are developing an early warning system.
To try to stop any conflict escalating
to a point where it could threaten the mission,
and the crew.
(beeps)
(tense music)
The journey to Mars will be
the longest manned voyage in history.
Scientists and engineers think they have the know how
to conquer the physical aspects of the journey to Mars
- Open your eyes please.
- [Narrator] The depths of the human mind
pose another greater risk.
Never before have human beings been so far removed
from contact with family and loved ones back home.
Because for the first time in the history
of human space fight,
they will lose sight of the Earth.
- When we're going to Mars, after a few days,
Earth is just a smaller and smaller dot
in your rear view mirror and you are going to then
have to have a whole new psychological level
that you are on.
- [Narrator] The only Mars analogy on Earth, Antarctica
is no match for the isolation of the Mars mission.
Jean Lemire spent six months with his crew,
isolated in Antarctica.
For him, communication was a priority.
- I decided right from the beginning that people
were able to have communication with their family
at least once per day, very expensive
but very important, you have news from the people they love
and it's important.
- [Narrator] The further the Mars craft is from Earth
the longer the communications delay,
family communications bring cold comfort
across the abyss of space.
No technology in known science can beat
the interplanetary time zone gap.
- We copy that you have an electrical power system event.
- [Narrator] Real time video conferences of science fiction
are all fiction, no science.
Psychologists are grappling with the question,
what will they say to the Mars astronauts
should catastrophe strike at home?
- I know they videod the surface so Will's going to put
it in the next batch transmission.
- The current thinking, is that
we ask as a matter of informed consent
we would say to you, if you were going on a mission
if something happens in this regard
would you want to know,
or would you want not to know?
(shouts)
- The key relationships in your life,
you really miss 'em, my son was a little over
a year and half years old,
my wife was pregnant, an issue that comes up is,
you know what if something bad happens to your family
on Earth, shouldn't they send you that message
and tell you that you lost your son?
You know, it'd be a tough time, I get choked up
just thinking about it.
- [Narrator] If one of the astronauts has a breakdown
there's no nearby hospital to send them too.
The rest of the crew has to deal with the problem.
- If a person truly starts to develop
a physical condition, that makes them dysfunctional
or dangerous, then it becomes basically
either a medical response in which the person
has to be sedated or medicated
or it becomes a command and control response
in which the mission commander restrains the person
so that they cannot damage themselves,
or the crew, or the vehicle.
- The only solutions to try and stop breakdowns
before they start, psychologists are a constant presence
in Russian mission control.
Observing the behavior of the crew.
The 2007 arrest of shuttle astronaut Lisa Nowak
revealed the limits
of any psychological assessment program.
- The astronauts go through a very detailed
psychiatric and psychological evaluation
at the time of selection.
After those tests and interviews are done
they're reviewed by a panel of experts
to make a recommendation to the selection board
and finally the psychologist panel
staffs all those cases for what we would call
suitability for short or long duration flights.
- [Narrator] For the Mars mission,
NASA's looking for new technology to prevent
psychological meltdowns in space.
David Dingus is the scientists specializing
in facial analysis to detect stress.
- Video is fairly unobtrusive that means
that we ask the question, how could video help us
understand whether humans are being stressed?
In any context and that was the platform
on which we developed the idea of trying
to use something called computervision
to track facial expressions of humans
to detect when they are stressed
by their performance demands.
Lift your eyebrows as high as you can.
Okay, try to form an asymmetry in your mouth,
we see this a lot from subjects.
He has a hard time doing it,
he's very symmetrical in his face.
- Commander Richard Irwin, psych assessment report,
February 2nd.
- [Narrator] Specialized software, examines facial movements
examines facial movements, looking for tell tale signs
of emotional disturbance.
Mission control could use this information to medicate
and if necessary restrain the mentally unstable astronaut.
- So far no knife fights.
- [Narrator] Dr Dimitri Metaxas helped develop
the facial stress software for NASA.
- We're into the science of quantifying
why people behave the way they behave
and how they express behavior.
It's not surprising why people from different countries
and different genders exhibit stress the same way
because not all types of emotions are expressed
the exact same way.
But in this case the brain works similarly
when it comes to stressful situations.
- [Narrator] NASA's a partner in the development
of this stress detector technology.
Aiming to perfect it for the mission to Mars.
Scientists in Russia share NASA's interest
in facial analysis to identify stress.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] A person's facial expression
shows the psychological type
of the person and his ability to cooperate.
There are people who compliment each other
and there are people who oppose each other.
The model based on the phenomenon of facial expression
allows us to determine psychological types of personalities.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Narrator] Stress is one problem, boredom's another.
The real Mars spacecraft will be largely automated.
Unlike the science fiction version
there is no hologram deck, no alien ships
to shoot out, the reality is
there will be little to do for six months.
- There are some people who are just
not psychologically suited for those periods
of boredom, they would just go stark raving mad.
- [Narrator] Then it all changes once they approach Mars.
Psychologists fear the astronauts may not be ready for it.
They may suffer from a syndrome
known as attention tunneling.
- Often in heavily automated systems,
you can go from prolonged periods of boredom
to moments of intense performance demand very rapidly.
And you want to train people to deal
with those rapid transitions.
(orchestral music)
- [Narrator] 1979 Three Mile Island
nuclear generating station in Pennsylvania.
A faulty gauge leads plant workers to make
the wrong assumptions while the reactor core
is in full meltdown.
(beeps)
- [Announcer] There's been a state of emergency be called.
(mumbles) Please stay in doors with your windows closed.
- [Narrator] For five days a nuclear fire rages
out of control before engineers find
the real cause of the problem.
Three Mile Island became a case study
for attention tunneling.
An automated system flung a bored team into action.
Under stress they made several critical mistakes
that nearly cost tens of thousands of lives.
(tense music)
(sizzles)
The Mars crew will have no margin for error,
if one of them makes a mistake,
they will all die.
- That's why we think for Mars the best thing
is to have an automated piloting and landing system
with a crew only intervening
if there's something goes wrong.
Try to avoid all those potential complications.
- [Narrator] This raises a new question,
how to train a crew to survive the psychological pressure
of living with the constant fear of dying
for a thousand days?
(Tense music)
- Clear it.
- [Narrator] The Russian space station MIR has had
it's share of mishaps.
The worst was in 1997 and it is an important lesson
for the crew that travels to Mars.
MIR commander Vasily Sivilya was at the controls
when an unmanned cargo supply ship
slammed into MIR.
(bangs)
The collision punched a hole in the stations module,
exposing the astronauts to the deadly vacuum of space.
It took two hours to contain the problem.
The whole crew was within moments of evacuating the station
in escape pods.
One of the MIR crewmen on that mission was so stressed
he had already decided to kill himself.
- One of the cosmonauts actually Rusotkin, told me,
that one the 10th day, he decided to commit suicide
because he couldn't stand it already.
He went to a remote place in one of the modules.
And before suicide he decided to sleep.
- [Narrator] The Cosmonaut woke up and chose to live.
On the journey to Mars the fear of death
will be a constant companion.
From lift off to splash down there are many ways to die,
they need to find a new breed of astronaut
with better coping skills and different personalities
and they will all have to pull together as a team
unlike any other crew in history.
Their lives will depend on it?
Sergei Volkov and Roman Romanko, Cosmonauts chosen
by Russia to go to Mars, must learn how to trust each other
in a survival situation.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] We start together, we should finish together,
maintaining the best possible psychological microclimate
in the team.
- [Narrator] The Russians know only to well
that pairing the wrong crew members could lead to tragedy.
In 1982 Russian cosmonaut Valentin Lebdev sent a message
to mission control,
- [Valentin] If you don't bring us down to Earth now,
I'm not going to work with this corpse anymore.
- [Narrator] After six months in space,
Lebdev was prepared to kill his fellow cosmonaut.
Russian mission control talked him out of
what could have been the first murder in Earth orbit.
On a mission to Mars they could face the same challenge.
Since 1999 NASA astronauts have trained
at the national outdoors leadership school in Wyoming.
Here the exploration generation of astronauts
will learn how to deal successfully with conflict.
- The expedition behavior is often times wrapped up
into a very positive personality
but positive expeditions behavior also comes
in the form of when people are willing
to ask the hard questions.
- [Narrator] Kanengeiter's favorite example
is the crew of SDS107, the seven people
who would tragically die when the Columbia burned up
in the Earth's atmosphere in 2003.
Technical delays gave the astronauts two years
to train together, longer than any other shuttle crew.
In the Wyoming wilderness, they faced a problem,
one crew member did not want to scale a mountain
with the others.
They changed his mind, he decided the good of the team
was more important than his own desires.
- So basically a group that's going to aggressively pursue
the peak and a second group that's not so aggressive
aggressively pursue the peak, now that's one option.
The other option is if we all just stay together
as a group of seven and do the best we can.
- Here's a great example of positive expedition behavior
shown by Mike Anderson who said, I don't really
want to climb but for the team I will.
- [Narrator] Kanengeiter and his team have identified
four personality types that would be ideal
for a journey to Mars.
The driver, the analyst, the motivator,
the relationship builder
and all of them have to be team players, no cowboys.
And there's no room for duplication.
- On a trip to Mars you're inevitably gonna be faced
with problems, if you've got the same thinkers
the same types of thinkers on the trip,
you're gonna run into problems pretty quickly.
- [Narrator] The Russians are now ready to conduct a test
on Earth to simulate the Mars mission.
Six volunteers will be locked in a small capsule
for at least 500 days.
Oxygen and water will be recycled.
There will even be a simulated Mars landing
and communications with a mock mission control center.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] Of course we're also looking
at the possibility of nervous breakdown
in the conditions of space flight.
- [Narrator] If someone snaps the experiment
can be canceled in the moment.
There will be no such luxury in a space ship,
especially now as they face the most demanding
and dangerous moment of their journey.
(dramatic music)
About six months after leaving Earth
the Exploration astronauts face the deadliest part
of the entire mission.
Penetrating the Martian atmosphere
and landing on the red planet.
- To get a probe onto the surface of Mars
is very challenging, we're batting
about 500 roughly speaking, about 50/50,
getting a human onto the surface
won't be any less difficult.
- [Narrator] The crew has done everything they can
to stay mentally and physically alert.
They've trained and exercised but they've also lived
through radiation, weightlessness,
and the psychological pressure cooker
of isolation and confinement.
And now, the moment of truth.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] You simply want to survive.
Of course it is nerve wracking to face the uncertainty
whether everything will function well
whether you will live.
- [Narrator] Going from Mars orbit to the surface
has been called the six minutes of terror,
on the surface there will be no waiting rescue crew,
no medical team.
- If you've got astronauts that are not in the peak
of condition then you may have an unsuccessful mission
right at the very end where they need to be at their prime.
- [Narrator] To solve the psychological risks
of the manned Mars mission, some discoveries
still need to be made on Earth.
In 2006 NASA conducted an 18 day experiment
in it's undersea lab called Nemo.
15 meters long, just four meters across,
Nemo is an underwater analogy for the Mars craft.
For this mission NASA installed cameras
and microphones to observe stress levels
in the crew, this data was fed to mission control
for real time observation.
The computers are an early warning system
for mental crisis, triggering treatment
for a stressed out astronaut
or in the worst case scenario, restrainment.
As the Nemo project pushes forward,
NASA seeks crews which come equipped
with their own problem solving skills,
unlike Apollo 13, there will be no Houston
to instantaneously deal with deadly problems.
- I'll get my turn in the driver's seat.
- [Narrator] NASA's also experimenting
with artificial intelligence as companions
for the mission to Mars.
- Continues to challenge Rick.
- [Narrator] Each astronaut might have
a custom designed AI companion to talk to
when human interaction becomes too volatile,
it's a start to keep astronauts distracted
from the day to day rhythm of life in space.
Finally, experts in both Russia and the United States
are looking for ways to pinpoint the ultimate crew
for the exploration generation.
No adrenaline junkies, no space cowboys,
only team players who respond well to structure
and can think outside the box in moments of crisis.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Translator] It's hard to say what awaits us on Mars
if we go there but this training is a way
of developing skills to face
any extreme conditions anywhere.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Narrator] Mission planners, ground control,
and billions of people on earth
will await anxiously to see if the first humans
to travel to Mars will make it safely to the surface.
- 25 meters.
- [Narrator] Will they successfully push their way
through the six minutes of terror?
Or will they perish, unseen,
millions of kilometers from home?
(dramatic music)
(epic music)
(Multicom Jingle)