MOSCOW. Dec 29 (Interfax-AVN) - Scientists believe mixed-gender crews are the best for flights to outer space, Oleg Orlov, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said.
"Mixed-gender crews are now, of course, being considered in terms of interplanetary flights. This is one of the tasks of the SIRIUS program. There is a goal of making the crews mixed-gender," Orlov said.
As part of the SIRIUS experiment, scientists are studying mixed-gender crews, specifically issues related to psychological compatibility, social relationships, and the fulfilment of crews' functions, he said.
SIRIUS chief manager Mark Belakovsky said that a medical-expert commission will meet after the New Year holidays. It will select ten candidates, who will begin training on January 14.
"The crew will consist of six people. According to our approach, which is the same as that of our U.S. colleagues, there should be at least two girls, and it will be better if there are three. The captain of the crew will be cosmonaut Yevgeny Tarelkin. There will definitely be a Russian doctor and at least two foreigners," Belakovsky said.
A "dry run" will be conducted in late February, during which six people will work inside an isolated facility together for three days.
Starting March 1, participants in a Russian-U.S. study will spend four months in a fully isolated ground-based medical-technical experimental facility of the IBMP in Moscow.
The experiment will involve the simulation of a flight to a satellite of the Earth, docking with a circumlunar station, a two-month flight in a lunar orbit, during which the crews will search for a good landing site, a lunar landing of a craft carrying four crewmembers, a period on the surface, and a return to Earth.
The first Russian-U.S. SIRIUS experiment was conducted in November 2017. It lasted 17 days.