The joint isolation experiment of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the NASA SIRIUS human research program were postponed from November 2020 to May 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Taking into account the current situation, the parties agreed that it would be advisable to postpone the launch of the eight-month experiment from November 2020 until the end of May next year,” the Institute’s press service quoted TASS as saying.
At the same time, crew training is scheduled to begin in the second half of January – early February 2021.
At the same time, the project organizers continue to prepare for the experiment, holding meetings with European organizations interested in participating in a remote format.
In 2019, Jennifer Fogarty, chief scientific supervisor of the NASA human research program, told RT that during the SIRIUS experiment, it is planned to artificially isolate mission members from the family and the outside world in order to understand how a group of people can function in isolation.