What will happen when space descends on Ladakh

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) caused excitement when it announced the launch of India's first analogue space mission in Leh, in collaboration with the Human Spaceflight Centre, ISRO, AAKA space studio, a space architecture firm, the University of Ladakh, IIT Bombay, and the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. The mission aims "to simulate life in interplanetary habitat to tackle the challenges of a base station beyond Earth".

The tweet from ISRO that got everyone excited.

What is an analogue space mission?

Before humans embark on missions to the Moon or Mars, practising these missions on Earth is crucial. This is where analogue space missions come in. Similar to flight and driving simulators, these missions simulate real-world settings. They are invaluable for astronaut training, equipment testing, and contingency planning. They also provide researchers with insights into habitability issues in extraterrestrial habitats and allow for field testing and in situ equipment validation. This includes testing rover designs' communication, navigation, manoeuvrability, and traction on realistic terrains. In essence, analogues are key in designing and developing instruments and technologies for exploring and inhabiting celestial bodies such as the Moon and Mars.

Binita Phartiyal of Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences-BSIP, Aloke Kumar of Indian Institute of Science -IISc and Shubhanshu Shukla of ISRO, one of the Gaganyaan astronauts, have collaborated to determine the ideal place for creating India's first analogue space mission station. According to their advice, an analogue station is being established in Ladakh to simulate a lunar/Martian base.

Why analogues are imperative?

"There are two important aspects of an analogue habitat," the researchers say. Before embarking on a human-led space mission, it is critical to investigate new equipment, station habitability, potential eventualities, and cognitive studies.

For example, in 2019, when a two-week-long space analogue mission was launched at the EuroMoonMars International MoonBase Alliance HI-SEAS, or EMMIHS-II, a NASA space mission analogue set up on the slopes of Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa to test habitat architecture, robotics, and space radiation, the mission encountered an unexpected obstacle on the second mission day. The water levels were fast dropping, and the crew discovered that the water-supply system was malfunctioning. On your way to the Moon or Mars, you can not call a plumber; the crew had to use emergency protocol and address the problem independently. These simulations give us challenging experiences while also helping us design safe protocols.

Another critical problem is interpersonal relationships. Astronauts on extended missions must be physically and psychologically sound, and team members must be able to live and work well together. The simulations train astronauts with coping mechanisms, while mission controllers get experience spotting potential interpersonal issues and defusing them before they blow up.

Second, the set-up can imitate a setting and function as a mock extraterrestrial research station, providing insight into the kind of study that could be conducted on a genuine space voyage.

Lastly, "from an engineering perspective, an analogue experiment provides a fertile testing grounds for human space technologies," according to the researchers.

Consider on-site storage and processing equipment, such as refrigerators or ice boxes. Will they work? Will storing consumables like food and chemicals for research during long-duration space voyages be safe? Various gadgets, large and tiny, must be tested and made fail-safe. The simulation offers the necessary information for tweaking and making the gadgets fail-safe.

Fourth, space missions will have restricted initial supplies. A voyage to the Moon lasts a few weeks, and we can bring enough food and water; however, a mission to Mars will last more than a year, and stocking the pantry would not suffice. As a result, the space habitat must recycle and produce all of its own energy for the life of the mission using just solar radiation and possibly small nuclear reactors. We will be able to verify the extent of conceivable recycling with existing terrestrial technologies and predict the level of self-sufficiency for space missions.

Why India needs an analogue?

From space missions to address national needs such as telecommunications, weather forecasting, and navigational help, ISRO is launching deep space missions to the Moon and Mars, with plans to visit Venus soon. It is contemplating a manned space mission, Gaganyaan, and is considering creating a space station soon. "Human space programs necessitate simulations on the ground, but India is not a part of ISS or any of the analogue missions", according to the researchers. "Given that Indian plans to have a space station by 2035 and a Moon landing by 2040, India must prioritise establishing multiple analogue research bases/stations", they say.

In a social media post, AAKA studio shared the broad conception of the habitat module. It will be inflatable and fit for the extremely harsh terrain of Ladakh.

Why Ladakh

According to the authors, Ladakh's unique geographical traits closely resemble Martian and lunar environments. The team considered various options, including the Rann of Kutch, Meghalayan caverns, Barren Island in Andaman, and deep mines, before settling on Ladakh to create analogue space missions. The landscape of Ladakh, with its dry, cold, arid desert, abundant rocky ground, loose rock blanketing the mountain slopes, vast flat land, segregated ground ice/permafrost, rock glaciers, dunes, drainage networks, and catastrophic flooding, is geo-morphologically similar to an early Mars and Moon, making it one of the best sites for developing an analogue research station.

Ladakh, like the surface of Mars or the Moon, is arid and devoid of precipitation and vegetation, and the temperatures are always subzero. Moreover, like Mars, it has signs of water in the past, higher levels of UV rays and cosmic radiation, lower atmospheric pressure, and other features. "It is also sufficiently isolated to generate a feeling of self sufficiency and survival among the crew, a requirement for actual mission", according to the researchers.

First analogue

At the advent of the space age, the Soviet Union constructed the first analogue in the Siberian Krasnoyarsk. The Soviets attempted to duplicate the Earth's cycle in a closed system under controlled conditions and transfer the model to space stations and extraterrestrial base stations by developing a facility known as BIOS-3, which stands for the Biological Closed Life Support System.

The BIOS-3 facility tried to recycle and self-sustain every aspect of the crew's, pet animals, and plant needs inside the closed system.

Construction began in 1965, and the facility was ready in 1972. One of their initial difficulties was to recycle human-breathed air by growing Chlorella algae in stacked tanks with artificial lighting. They discovered that a single human required 8 square metres of exposed chlorella. Yevgeny Shepelev, a scientist, volunteered and survived for 24 hours in a confined biological system to show that recycled oxygen can be used for life support.

Ten human trials with one to three-man crews were conducted between 1972 and 1984, with a three-man crew lasting 180 days (in 1972-1973). Soviet scientists demonstrated at the facility that, using the technologies available at the time, it was possible to recycle 99% of the air, 85% of the water, and roughly 50% of the food and nutrients. Since then, this institution has been a model for other counterparts established worldwide.

The facility is now operated as an International Centre for Closed Ecosystems research centre, focussing on plant growth and waste recycling rather than a space mission equivalent. The Russians have developed a new facility outside Moscow dubbed SIRIUS (Scientific International Research In a Unique Terrestrial Station) to simulate extraterrestrial environments. This, like BIOS-3, is a sealed facility for bioregenerative life support system experiments.

Analogues worldwide

Other analogue facilities exist worldwide, including NASA's Human Exploration Research Analogue project HERA, based at the NASA Johnson Space Centre. This three-story habitat serves as a representation of isolation, confinement, and remote situations in exploration scenarios. This is not a sealed facility, meaning it does not investigate closed loops. However, the European Space Agency's Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA), which aims to produce food, water, and oxygen from mission waste using light as energy, is similar to the Soviet BIOS-3, which investigated closed systems.

The Chinese have created Lunar Palace I, a sealed analogue that simulates a confined biosphere. The analogue, developed by the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, can accommodate numerous crew members. The first experiment was organised in 2014, while the second lasted 370 days in 2017-18.

Other analogues include the now-abandoned Biosphere-2 facility at the University of Arizona in LunAres, Poland, an analogue laboratory under private management, Europe's Self-deployable portable habitat for extreme conditions (SHEE), and the Desert Mars Analogue Ramon Station (D-MARS) analogue habitat in Israel's desert.

In addition to these terrestrial analogues, human spaceflight missions to space stations, including long-duration missions of the International Space Station (ISS), serve as an appropriate analogue for studying long-duration space travel and habitability in the extraterrestrial environment.

Mission Mars

Learning from BIOS-3, the Russians executed MARS-500, an analogous mission between 2007 and 2011, in conjunction with the European Space Agency and China. The project was designed to investigate the psychological, physiological, and technological issues associated with long-duration space flight. From June 3, 2010, until November 4, 2011, a 520-day simulation was underway with six crew members, including three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian, and a Chinese. The crew bonded effectively despite cultural differences and language barriers and experienced little interpersonal strife. However, the crew slept more as the days passed. Detailed research is being undertaken; for example, daily faecal samples revealed that the gut microbiome changed throughout the long-term confinement. This is the most extended voluntary confinement study done to date.

NASA recently conducted an imitation Mars trip with four crew members isolated in a 160 square-meter 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha habitat at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston. The facility was used to simulate the onward and return space journey, Mars landing, relaunch from Mars, and stay and exploration on the Martian surface. Called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analogue (CHAPEA), this mission lasted 378 days.

The crew participated in simulated "marswalks," robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercise, and crop growth. They also encountered artificial environmental stressors in their habitat, such as resource limits, isolation, and confinement.

The simulated environment of space travel to Mars included Mars-realistic time delays when communicating with Earth, nearly 44-minute roundtrips, and a limited food system that can be supported on the space station. All of these resembled the expected experience for those living in a future Mars surface habitat.

NASA plans to conduct two further mock expeditions in 2025 and 2026.

Indian analogue

Except for the tweet, neither ISRO nor any other partner has publicly stated about the nature analogue habitat HAB-1 or when the mock crewed mission will begin. However, the image distributed by ISRO looks to reflect AAKA studio's modular architectural design, HAB-1.

The habitat will have a sleeping area, kitchen, and place to grow hydroponics.

In a previous social media post, the AAKA studio unveiled the design of the HAB-1 analogue, and a press release explained the nature and aim of the proposed analogue mission.

The habitat can accommodate a one-person crew and is powered by solar panels. The analogue is intended to have a crew quarter, a kitchen, a hygiene module, and plants and algae grown on a hydroponic farm. The initial mock experiment is anticipated to last 21 days. During this time, the one-person crew will engage in mock drill activities involving simulated space voyages and extraterrestrial living.

The mock drill, led by Aaka Space Studio Pvt Ltd, will allow experts to evaluate habitat design, resource management, life support systems such as water recycling, air quality monitoring, energy availability, crew health, human performance in isolation, and the psychological impact on the crew. The information gathered from this analogue voyage will inform India's Gaganyaan program and future programs, such as the Bharatiya Space Station, strengthening ISRO's human spaceflight capabilities.