During the entire year of 2020, most people in the world have to stay in their home because of the pandemic. People had very limited outdoor activity and got used to have virtual meeting on online environment. A lot of people complained that how hard to keep staying at home for long time. However, this living style will be more popular when we start to move to the Moon and Mars. With the current rocketry technology, according to NASA, the journey to Mars will take about seven months with the best flight path. For example, NASA’s new Mars rover “Perseverance” launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. So, if we are considering sending a humankind to the Mars, people are staying in the spacecraft for about seven months or more than seven months because of the increased size of the spacecraft.

The MARS-500 Mission

Between 2007 and 2011, Russia, the European Space Agency and China conducted a psychosocial isolation experiment which named “the MARS-500,” to study the psychological, physiological, and technological challenges inherent to long-distance space travel. The volunteers were isolated in the sealed chamber which is simulating spacecraft environment. Through out 520 days mission, they found out that crew’s overall activity level fall down, and the crew members spent more time in bed or engaged in personal activity during the later stage of experiment.  

Architectural design solution for space exploration

I believe that many people who stayed at home for long time during the pandemic period has suffered same issues that the crew members suffered in the experiment. Because the future habitation in space exploration age will be mostly isolated chambers, architects should start to think about the quality of indoor environment that can improve resident’s mood, psychological status.