NASA space station orbiting the moon may cause claustrophobia in astronauts: what’s wrong with it?

Space writes that according to one of the architects of the Gateway orbital station, which will be placed in lunar orbit, the living spaces here will be too small for the astronauts to stay in, and this will make it difficult for them to move. .

in 24News Breaker. Technology emerged telegraph channel. Subscribe so you don’t miss the latest and exciting news from the world of science!

NASA, along with other space agencies, plans to begin building a new space station near the moon in the coming years. By the late 2020s, the Gateway station should begin receiving the first astronauts on board. The size of the station will only be 1/6th the size of the ISS, and it’s the station’s small size that could cause a lot of inconvenience to the astronauts.

According to Rene Waclavicek, one of the architects of the future lunar space station, several astronauts will be in the same module at the same time. But the size of this module is only 2 by 2 meters or 8 cubic meters. Although there are other rooms, they are not many and they are just as small.

“Imagine being locked in such a small room and you’re not alone there. It can be claustrophobic,” Waclavicek says.

The architect was involved in the creation of one of the two astronaut accommodation modules, the I-Hab, which will be connected to the HALO science module. According to Vaclavicek, while working on the project, the architects had to take into account that this station would be located close to the moon. This means that it cannot have the same dimensions as the ISS due to difficulties in transmitting large segments to the Earth satellite.

“We initially thought of a main module 6 meters long and 4.5 meters in diameter. But in the end we had to reduce the dimensions and we ended up with an interior section measuring only 1.2 m by 1.2 m. And most of the interior is filled with machines, this So it’s actually a very difficult corridor to go back to,” says Vaclavicek.

According to the architect, the I-Hab module is a simple cylinder with a cap at each end and two caps on the sides. There was also a place for the astronauts to have a small personal space that they could close.

“Even if you want to pass each other in the hallway, it will be difficult to do so because you have to leave all your work for another astronaut to pass,” Waclavicek says.

But staying at the Gateway station will be difficult for many reasons, not just cramped living quarters. According to the architect of the station, most of the module will be occupied by noisy and vibrating life support equipment, whose constant hum can greatly annoy the astronauts.

For example, the ISS has a large viewing window located in the Dome module. Here astronauts spend every spare minute. But such pleasure is not expected in the new moon station, and this is due to the complexity of the design. The architects plan to install small windows at the entrance of the station.

NASA plans to send the HALO module to the moon as early as 2024 and the I-Hab module to the moon in 2027. The architects have now started to create a life-size model of the station to test the astronauts’ interaction with their environment.

Focus NASA has already written that the first phase of the lunar program was successfully completed in December last year. The unmanned Orion spacecraft has returned to Earth, and now astronauts will board the ship and fly to the moon next year. But NASA didn’t plan to land astronauts on our satellite’s surface until 2025, and the previous manned flight would only be a test phase before a man returns to the Moon 50 years later.

As for the ISP, as I already wrote FocusNASA is looking for ways to help astronauts who may not be able to return to Earth with the help of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. A SpaceX spacecraft will likely be used for this.