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2005-02-14 What are the major differences between all-female and all-male crews living on Martian bases? Two parallel international crews, with Ricardo Patrício from Active Space Technologies leading one of them, will simulate a mission in a red planet base, in Utah, USA, in order to find out answers to questions like this. Space missions to Mars have long been a part of Science Fiction. Nowadays, the Mars Society Desert Research Station (MDRS) offers a flavour of that fiction. Each crew will be isolated for two weeks, with limited contact with a "ground control station", in one of the few places on Earth with an environment similar to Mars. At the MDRS the "martianauts" will carry out the Mona Lisa - Leonardo research project. The Mona Lisa - Leonardo project was started at the ISU's Summer Session Program 2004 (SSP04) in Adelaide, Australia. At the SSP04, the multidisciplinary international crews learned, among other subjects, about the results of the study, made by Dr. Sheryl Bishop from the University of Texas, on crew composition and group behaviour in long term isolation. It was noted that nearly no data is available for all-female crews. Therefore, two complementary and parallel teams were put together: the Mona Lisa crew and the Leonardo crew, all-female and all-male teams, respectively. A human mission to Mars will probably consist of an international team constituted by both male and female members. However, there is little information concerning female crews behaviour in real or test missions. This is the main issue that will be addressed by the Mona Lisa project. The data will then be compared to that obtained from the all-male mission, the Leonardo project, which will run under similar conditions. This project, however, goes beyond the study of group dynamics as it involves the multi-disciplinary skills of the teams. The Mona Lisa - Leonardo project is also related to more technical matters related to the preparation of a mission to Mars: automated reconnaissance vehicles, robots remote control, security protocols, and comparison between different suits specially developed for the Martian environment, just to mention a few tasks. To learn more about the Mona Lisa - Leonardo project, please consult the press dossier, visit its official site, or the Mars Society web page. For further information please contact:
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