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T-18 days and counting

While the PMAS – Poland Mars Analogue Simulation is launching within the next few days, we are finalising our preparations for the Lunar Expedition 1 mission. We’ve already passed medical checks, which makes us confident, that we are ready for the two-week isolation in the lunar-simulated environment of the Lunares habitat. And we are just about to start the habitat procedures training this weekend. Once the PMAS crew will enter the habitat at Monday, we will enter the last phase of preparations for our mission.

We were involved in this project from the very beginning. We were chosen as the first Polish analogue astronaut crew and conducted the first analogue lunar simulation in Poland, in the first Polish analogue habitat. The mission didn’t have its name until second day I belive, where I proposed “The Lunar Expedition 0”. It was conducted last summer in Rzepiennik Biskupi. Now, we are about to conduct a follow-up mission in the modular habitat located at the airport of Piła, right after the PMAS.

For all of us, it will be a new experience, and by all I mean both the crew, the Mission Control and organisers. The two-week analogue missions with full crew isolation were never conducted in Poland before. Last year, probably no one thought that it would be possible to conduct two consequent and different missions, one after another: the Martian one, in which the communication channels will be delayed to simulate radio signals travelling from the Earth to Mars and back, and the second – with local mission clock shifted, kind of a lunar jet-lag. Finally, noone ever thought that analogue simulations will become a fact, here, in Poland. We are still far from the real human spaceflight in our country, yet we believe, that these small steps leads us in the right direction.

Last but not least, let me introduce the Lunar Expedition 1 crew:

  • Piotr Konorski - Commander
  • Mariusz Słonina - Vice-commander and media officer, myself
  • Dorota Budzyń - Communication commander
  • Joanna Kuźma - Astrobiologist
  • Grzegorz Ambroszkiewicz - Biomedical engineer
  • Matt Harasymczuk - Medical officer

We will introduce ourselves within the next week, and for now, let the official countdown clock start! #lunarexpedition1