Six carefully selected and trained astronauts - including the Israeli representative, Alon Tanzer - will enter a research station set up specifically in Ramon Crater, for about a month, for a series of scientific and technological experiments to examine selected issues and actions that astronauts will be able to test on Mars in the future.
Other goals set by the developers are international exposure of Israeli technology and science in the field of space, and the establishment of an infrastructure for an educational program on space research for Israeli students.
Just before the project got underway, we visited Ramon Crater and talked to the people thanks to whom it is happening.
The mission will be carried out in an erosion crater that is a simulation of Mars, topographically and geologically. The crew members - astronauts and representatives of Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Israel - will be at the Habitat research station for the entire period, artificially cut off from Earth. To perform the experiments on the surface, they will have to wear special suits at each of their exits from the research station that will provide them with oxygen (as in the International Space Station). Throughout the project, a control room will be staffed 24/7 that will monitor the status of the staff and the progress of the experiments.
Alon Tanzer tells Israel Today: "Tomorrow the real thing starts. Of course there is excitement. I have been preparing for it for three years. This is the first big imaginary mission I participate in. It is of course not one hundred percent of the time, everyone here has a different job and children, But we are investing significant time in that. "
Tanzer, dressed in a space suit, faces the terrible heat of the south of the country.
"The suit is open, as you can see, but when it is closed there is a system that helps in the circulation of the air to regulate the heat."
Research Station, Looking Inside, Photo: Dudu Greenspan
Tal Inbar, a member of the board of directors of D-MARS - which is involved in the project together with the Space Agency, the Austrian Space Forum and Mitzpe Ramon - says: "D-MARS people actually planned the habitat. "Simulated people are looking for something that can simulate Mars. They were in all sorts of places in the world, but here it's the most similar there is, because once there was water here and today it is dry, desert, just like on Mars."
The great distance that the Earth is in relation to Mars allows communication, but not in the continuous way that we know in the country.
At best, the delay is at least ten minutes so that the astronauts, as well as the crew sitting in the IAF, know and have to make decisions on their own.
But there is also a limit to how much you can imagine.
If you have something in a suit, in the worst case you suffocate - take it off and breathe, "explains Inbar.
Ran Livna, CEO of the Ramon Foundation and head of the "Sky" mission, which is expected to take off into space in about four months: "The space industry is adjustable to Mars.
"Most of NASA's space and Earth projects will be related in the next decade to their attempt to accumulate knowledge and tools to establish extraterrestrial and Martian life."
Guy Levy participated in the preparation of the article
