Five officers of the Colombian Aerospace Force will be trained next week, as a space analog crew, at the University of North Dakota, United States, in a mission called Atlas (Advance Training in Lunar And Space Activities), conducting lunar and space activities.
In 2022, the Colombian Aerospace Force carried out the first mission of this type in Poland; by 2023, it proposed a second one, to train and certify five officers in similar aerospace missions with a view to fulfilling a strategic objective of the institution, to have a Colombian in space.
Wearing blue overalls, a characteristic of those who take this training, four men and one woman, prepare to face this challenge; a major, two captains and two second lieutenants of the areas of engineering, medicine and flight, will simulate the isolation conditions that are experienced on a space station.
The members of Atlas are Major Brian Ingerman Sánchez Ayala, medical officer of the crew, Captain José David Ortega Pabón - communications officer of the crew, Captain Diego Ernesto Cortés Guaje - mission commander, Second Lieutenant Joseph Néstor Sequeda Ramón - crew data officer and Second Lieutenant Ingrid Xiomara Bejarano Cifuentes - Aerospace Engineer of the Crew.
The Atlas analog mission will take place in the Habitat: ILMAH (Inflatable Moon-Mars Analog Habitat), with a duration of 13 days in isolation and confinement, where each member will carry out a research project and will make extra vehicular walks, with the NDX 2-AT EVA suits.
Thanks to this confinement, it will be possible to determine the physiological changes in human behavior, in the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) and on the nervous system, in addition, it seeks to establish the impact of the exposure of a mission on the quantity and quality of sleep, as well as behavior in visual memory, and fine motor dexterity, among others; the Institution proposes to have analogous missions every year, increasingly raising the level of difficulty, with a view to preparing the first Colombian in space.
Source: Press Colombian Aerospace Force
