Evelyne Wang:
In December 2025, I participated in UMIC’s first indoor underwater “Lunar Farm” remotely operated vehicle (ROV) mission.
In early February 2026, under the guidance of Antonio P. Yocol, Head of the Offshore Resources Management Department of Zamboanguita City, Philippines, and UMIC Commander Chris Yuan, I completed a six-day scuba diving training programme followed by a two-day artificial reef restoration and coral planting project in the Philippine Sea.
The mission focused on restoring coral communities damaged by typhoons while contributing to the rebuilding of the seabed ecosystem.
Yet this project was designed to explore something more than ecological restoration alone.
Unlike conventional artificial reef deployments, this mission also functioned as a simulated lunar habitat construction exercise.

Structure and Construction:
The artificial reef consisted of eighteen 4-metre concrete pillars, each weighing approximately 850 kilograms. These pillars were lowered from the ship by crane.
On the seabed, divers operated without heavy machinery. Movement and positioning depended entirely on buoyancy bags, counterweights, and carefully coordinated underwater teamwork.
Precision and control became far more important than brute force.

​In water, an object’s mass remains constant, but its effective weight is reduced by buoyancy. This physical principle provides an intriguing comparison with lunar construction.
On the Moon, where gravity is roughly one-sixth of Earth’s, structural components would exert far less working weight. Tasks that demand heavy equipment on Earth could potentially be performed by small astronaut teams using simple mechanical aids.
From this perspective, underwater construction offers a practical analogue for understanding how engineering processes might function in reduced-gravity environments.
Some of the challenges we encountered closely resembled those expected in space operations:

1. Limited mobility
   
2. Dependence on life support systems
   
3. Restricted communication and coordination
   

Ecological Restoration: From Structure to Life:
Construction alone was not the endpoint of the mission.
Beyond structural assembly, we reconnected and replanted damaged corals. Each anchored reef module represents the beginning of a new habitat unit, supporting marine biodiversity and long-term ecosystem recovery.
The lifecycle of an artificial reef typically involves:

1. Design
2. Deployment
3. Ecological assessment
4. Long-term maintenance

This mirrors the design, construction, and maintenance logic required for future extraterrestrial habitats.

The underwater environment provides a particularly meaningful analogue. Divers operate with restricted movement, rely entirely on life support systems, and must execute tasks through precise coordination.
Completing both engineering and ecological restoration under these constraints transforms simulation into activity with tangible environmental value.
The broader aims of this mission included:
• Restoring typhoon-damaged marine ecosystems
• Developing engineering and operational skills relevant to extreme environments
• Exploring construction logic applicable to remote or reduced-gravity conditions
• Demonstrating how space-inspired thinking can support Earth’s ecological resilience

​The broader significance of the mission becomes clearer through the instructor’s perspective.

Chris Yuan - an Instructor's Perspective:
​As a mentor, I focus less on the individual engineering or ecological restoration tasks and more on the systemic significance of the mission itself.
Evelyne’s progression from an indoor underwater “Lunar Farm” remotely operated vehicle mission to open-sea scuba operations, followed by artificial reef construction and coral replanting, represents a complete analogue capability development sequence. It integrates remote operation, adaptation to extreme environments, structural execution, and ecosystem maintenance within a single training continuum.

The value of this mission lies in its simultaneous engagement with three distinct layers of logic:
• Engineering — testing collaborative construction under altered physical constraints.
• Ecological — creating durable habitat structures for living marine systems.
• Civilisational — exploring pathways through which space-derived thinking can serve planetary restoration.
Underwater environments are uniquely suited to analogue research because they naturally impose conditions analogous to those anticipated in future space missions. Divers experience restricted mobility, dependence on life support systems, partial isolation, and the necessity of precise coordination.
These constraints are not simulated abstractions. They are operational realities.

By conducting genuine ecological restoration within such environments, the boundary between training and application dissolves. Simulation acquires immediate material consequence. Participants are not merely rehearsing theoretical scenarios but actively contributing to the recovery and stabilisation of living ecosystems.
This reframes the purpose of analogue missions.
They become mechanisms through which exploration-driven knowledge can generate direct planetary benefit.

Antonio P. Yocor - Location and Ecological Background:
Municipality of Zamboanguita; Local Disaster Reduction AMD Management; Coastal Resources and Management (Official Perspective).
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​Zamboanguita is located on the southern coast of Negros Oriental Province in the central Philippines, facing the Bohol Sea. The region lies within the Coral Triangle, widely recognised as one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on Earth.
Its coastal waters support extensive coral reefs, seagrass beds, and a remarkable variety of marine life, including reef fish, molluscs, and sea turtles. The area is ecologically connected to the Dumaguete coastline and the Apo Island marine protected systems, forming part of a larger and highly dynamic reef network.
For generations, local communities have depended on this environment through small-scale fisheries and diving tourism. Reef health is therefore closely intertwined with both ecological stability and regional livelihoods.

Yet even environments of extraordinary richness exist within delicate margins of stability.
​

Ecological Challenges:
Despite its extraordinary biodiversity, the region faces persistent environmental pressures.
Seasonal typhoons frequently cause physical damage to reef structures, breaking corals and destabilising habitats. Rising sea temperatures contribute to coral bleaching events, while localised overfishing and coastal development introduce additional stresses.
Sedimentation, storm disturbance, and climatic variability collectively shape a fragile ecological balance.
In response, many Philippine coastal regions have adopted restoration strategies combining marine sanctuaries with artificial reef deployment. These approaches seek not only to rehabilitate damaged ecosystems but also to strengthen long-term resilience within both natural and human systems.

Exploration, experience, and extension are intrinsic human behaviours and attitudes toward life. Whether it is an ordinary person living life in their own way or someone belonging to a particular group, everyone naturally follows this behavioural pattern. This attitude toward life does not belong to people of any specific field or domain; it is a universal human way of thinking. 
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When two people rubbed stones together for the first time, they did not know it would produce fire. It was exploration that motivated them to try. That exploration led to experience, in the form of fire, which they later extended and used for their own benefit. 

This cycle never stops, and it never will. I believe the motivation to explore is something we are born with. By the age of 24 months, babies begin to ask, “What’s that?” This shows that exploration is a basic human instinct. Therefore, we can say that exploring is a fundamental human right and reflects an individual’s attitude towards life. 
​
Narrowing down the concept of exploration is a big injustice to this broad term when it is associated only with research and science. Let’s dig deeper: as human beings, are we only responsible for living a balanced life, or are we here to do something more? The immediate answer would definitely be “no.” Why? Because it goes against the thought pattern embedded in our very blueprint. 

​ Expecting a life without exploration would diminish the idea of a well-experienced and extended life. Therefore, never let your urge to explore toward positivity die; it will never disappoint any of us. A scientist is often considered the most righteous person associated with the term “exploration,” but in reality, exploration is not bound to any single profession. It belongs to the mental capacity to imagine where exploration begins. Virtuality (the idea to think), adaptability (the idea to experience), and modernism (the idea to extend) form a chain that allows every human being to begin this journey. 
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Our terminologies often carry the same underlying context: space (the idea to explore), science (the idea to experience), and technology (the idea to expand). But do these actually add value to a common person’s life? Apparently, in the case of technology, the answer is “yes.” However, connecting the goal of space with the life of a common person seems to involve a distance of thousands of miles. So what makes it relevant or interesting to them? Can we all shift to the Moon? or should we? 

In reality, the highest target “space” creates differences at the smallest level of human life. Not everyone may believe in or think about a man on the Moon, but everyone enjoys its benefits in their daily routine. Whether it appears in consumer goods, health and care, communication, or emerging technologies, space driven innovation continues to deliver mind-blowing ideas that quietly shape our everyday lives.

When we think about nations where even the simplest needs of life are difficult to meet, an obvious question arises: can large scale space exploration be carried out there? The answer is clearly no. Nevertheless, the desire to innovate and explore should not be confined by these limitations. Rather, space exploration serves as a platform for thinking big and accomplishing even greater objectives.
​​
Life carries a unique significance. For 4.54 billion years, exploration has enhanced its existence; however, the choice remains ours, to explore for peace or for war.

If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this week, you will have seen that NASA is bringing the Crew-11 astronauts back from the International Space Station early due to a “medical issue.”
No great details given due to privacy rights, so no name, no diagnosis, and no great drama. Nonetheless, this lack of detail always leads to worry, much speculation and many clickbait headlines to boost page visitor numbers. But to be honest, this event holds no great mystery, it’s nothing weird, in fact, it’s probably overdue!

When we think of space exploration, we generally think of it as something heroic - big rockets, brave astronauts floating around and amazing photos of our planet Earth. What we don’t really talk about is that space is quietly hostile to the human body, not in an exploding spacesuit sci-fi drama sort of way, but in a slow, grinding, biological manner.
The simple fact is that microgravity messes with almost everything:

• Bones start leaking calcium.
• Muscles shrink.
• Blood moves around your body differently.
• Immune system gets confused.
• Eyes can change shape.
• Hearts can alter and not work in the usual way.
• Even old viruses that you had as a child can spark back into life again.

​Astronauts are not ‘ill’ in space in the usual sense, but they are also not ‘normal’ anymore. Instead, their bodies are constantly adapting and compensating for the lack of gravity, and slowly using up their safety margins.

NASA has not revealed exactly what happened to the Crew-11 astronaut who needed to come home and they probably never will. However, the important part really isn’t the specific symptom. The important part is that someone’s body crossed a line where Earth became safer than orbit. This is less about a mission failure and more about highlighting the reality of long-duration spaceflight.
The ISS has been permanently occupied for more than 25 years. In that time, astronauts have had all kinds of health issues up there, even if they were rarely described that way, for example:

• Heart rhythm changes.
• Kidney stones.
• Vision problems.
• Blood clots.
• Immune system crashes.
• People fainting and being unable to stand up when they come home.

​Most of it is explained away in polite language like “out of an abundance of caution” or for “operational reasons”, but this time, Crew-11 has said the quiet part out loud.

​Early space missions were short, just days or weeks. You could grit your teeth and push through, and before you knew it you were returning to Earth again. Nowadays, astronauts live on the ISS for six months, and sometimes longer. That turns spaceflight into something very different. It’s no longer a short sprint but more of a long-distance race, with slow exposure to an environment for which the human body was never designed. Astronauts these days are less like explorers and more like participants in long medical experiments, and sometimes experiments can end early.

InnovaSpace Director, Thais Russomano, is a doctor who specialised in space medicine and human physiology, and she will often say that space doesn’t suddenly break you. Rather, it slowly begins to nudge every single body system away from where it is accustomed to being. Most of the time, the body copes and adapts, but sometimes, it doesn’t. So, if NASA says someone needs to come home for medical reasons, it isn’t a mystery. It should be taken as a reminder that although human bodies are incredible, they still come with limits.

Fortunately for Crew-11, being on the ISS means they could come home relatively easily. But what of a Moon crew - maybe not - and a Mars crew - definitely not. There is no quick splashdown from deep space. This story perhaps reflects not so much on one astronaut on one mission, but sharply highlights where we are on a bigger journey.
​We are leaving the era of “Can humans survive in space?” and entering a new era of “Just how long can humans survive in space?”

​One day, while studying the biography of Herbert von Karajan, the legendary conductor regarded as one of the greatest in the history of conducting and often referred to as the “conductor of conductors”, I was struck by his reflections on rhythm. He stated that “if no one teaches students the basic disciplines of rhythm, things become impossible”. Although this statement, coming from a musician, may at first seem to relate exclusively to music, in reality rhythm goes far beyond this. It encompasses a sense of balance in physical movement, mental processes, learning, self-care, daily activities and vital energy.

​Our bodies function rhythmically. We need only recall cardiac rhythm, breathing, sleep, digestive function and circadian rhythms, among many others. Of the biological rhythms that regulate bodily function, the circadian rhythm stands out as a central example, as it organises hormonal release in a time-dependent manner. The secretion of cortisol, melatonin, growth hormone and insulin follows patterns that influence metabolism, immune response, cognitive performance and tissue repair. In preventive medicine, recognising these rhythms allows functional variations to be interpreted, the timing of assessments to be guided, and interventions to be individualised.

​Still within the scope of preventive medicine, the starting point for a health review is not defined by age-related calendars nor by the presence of symptoms, but rather by the early recognition of functional changes, taking family history and genetics into account. Beginning an assessment at this stage means respecting an individual’s biological timing, interpreting subtle functional signals and anticipating risks before disease becomes established. In this way, the clinical review becomes a strategy of continuous, personalised care, aimed at preserving autonomy and health over time.

​These notions of the body’s own language interact with our daily activities. Returning to music, we know that a large proportion of Baroque works were written at a tempo of 75 to 80 beats per minute, measured by a metronome (a device used by musicians to regulate tempo by setting beats per minute), which corresponds closely to the average resting heart rate considered normal. It could be said that this synergy is pleasing to most people.

​A medical consultation also has its own rhythm, which is sometimes forgotten or even never learned. A consultation has a beginning, a development, a moment of climax and a conclusion. Expressing empathy either too early or at an inappropriate moment disrupts this balance, and the doctor–patient relationship becomes misaligned. Entering the correct frequency to properly understand a patient is a skill that requires a basic sense of rhythm. An andante tempo (a musical term referring to tempos between 72 and 84 beats per minute) closely resembles our heart rate and therefore feels comfortable to us. In other words, at the start of a consultation or during a visit to a patient in a hospital bed, the encounter should follow a rhythm that conveys safety and support from the doctor. This is a skill that should be better recognised and valued by professionals. From the patient’s perspective, the choice of when to undertake a clinical review should be carefully considered and planned for the new year that is beginning.

​Another, rather striking, story related to rhythm concerns three conductors who died while conducting the third act of Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. The pauses in this passage are intermittent and irregular, creating tension that can affect both mind and body. Karajan, aware of this and seeking to protect himself, would dissipate this intense tension by using breathing movements to distance himself from the musical strain.
In life, as in music, it is essential to find the right rhythm for each challenge, especially when it comes to caring for one’s own health.

​Yet another year has flown by, and we now say goodbye to 2025 and welcome in 2026. Reflecting on the last twelve months in human space exploration, it feels like a year shaped more by consolidation than by any grand spectacle. Crews continued to live and work aboard the International Space Station, commercial astronaut missions became increasingly routine, and long‑planned space programmes quietly adjusted their timelines in response to technical and human realities. Rather than dramatic milestones, 2025 has offered something perhaps more valuable: a year of learning, reassessment, and preparation. Against this backdrop, the year ahead arrives not with grand promises, but with a sense of renewed direction, a year where people, not just missions, come back into sharper focus.

Stepping into 2026 seems like a good time to pause and take stock of where human space exploration really is. Not where the flashiest headlines suggest it might be, but where those working within the field know it to be. After years of delays, redesigns, and reality checks, there is a sense that progress is resuming, carefully and deliberately, with a renewed emphasis on the human being at the centre of spaceflight.
​2026 may not deliver dramatic firsts or iconic boot‑prints on planetary surfaces, but it should mark a return to forward motion, and in human space exploration, that truly matters.

​One of the most symbolically important missions of the year will be Artemis II. This mission is not about landing. It is about learning, or perhaps relearning, how to send people safely into deep space. It is safety‑focused and cautious by design, and that caution feels exactly right.

​While deep space draws attention, low Earth orbit continues to do much of the heavy lifting by laying the research groundwork. The International Space Station remains an extraordinary laboratory for understanding how the human body and mind respond to life in space. Commercial astronaut missions will no longer be a novelty in 2026, but will form part of the regular rhythm of human activity in orbit.

​China’s human space programme continues to progress at a calm, steady pace. Crewed missions to the Tiangong space station build long‑duration experience, while robotic lunar missions quietly prepare the ground for future human exploration. Different pathways perhaps, but shared human challenges.

​Robotic missions may lack the drama of crewed flights, but they are essential. Lunar south‑pole exploration, including the search for water ice, is practical preparation for a future human presence beyond Earth.

From a personal perspective, 2026 will also mark the very welcome return of the IAA Humans in Space Symposium in Montecatini, Italy. As the only international congress dedicated entirely to humans in space, its focus on physiology, psychology, performance, and wellbeing feels particularly timely.

I wouldn’t consider myself a great poet, far from it, but I would argue the case that poetry (and many of the other arts) have a rightful place in the future of space exploration. Life in space is not only about engineering solutions or medical data. Indeed, many astronauts onboard the ISS have found a need to reflect on and share their experiences, giving us a glimpse of space through human feelings and humour, more specifically through poetry.
Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden published Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour in 1974, a collection of poems about his experiences as an astronaut and the feelings of joy and solitude that being in space provoked. Decades later in 2012, Don Pettit shared his own reflections while on the ISS in a short poem entitled Space Is My Mistress. These examples show that astronauts often look beyond scientific reporting, choosing poetry as a way to express moments that are difficult to put into ordinary words.

​Artistic work, including poetry, helps connect the public with space exploration. Scientific papers and technical reports can feel distant, but a poem sparks curiosity and imagination in new audiences. Some projects have even included artists directly in space-related activities, such as analog missions and exhibitions that mix art with science. These efforts highlight that exploration is not only about technology and survival, but also about culture and community. In the long run, creative expression will be an important part of how people adapt to life away from Earth.

​In honour of this blog, I thought I would write a few lines of poetry about spending time on the ISS, though let me remind you I warned in my first sentence that I am far from being a good poet – so bear with me! Here in the UK, I’m of an age that remembers an ITV television talent programme called Opportunity Knocks, decades before Simon Cowell and Britain’s Got Talent appeared on the scene. It was the mid-1970s and onto the stage walked a homely young lady called Pam Ayres, who in a little more than two minutes recited a humorous poem called ‘The Embarrassing Experience With A Parrot’. The audience loved her, I loved her, and my older brother Chris spent the following years of his life reciting Pam Ayres poems as his party trick to impress his friends! Considering all this, and remembering my brother who is no longer with us, I created a short light-hearted ode in the style of Pam Ayres, called Six Months Aloft.

​As we plan for longer missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, it becomes clear that astronauts will need more than machines and medicine to thrive. They will also need ways to express themselves and to stay connected with their own humanity. Poetry, along with other forms of art, helps bring meaning to the experience of living in space. Whether serious or humorous, it reminds us that exploration is not only about survival, but also about creativity, culture, and simply being human.

When humans eventually set foot on Mars, they’ll face a medical challenge that rarely needs to be thought about on Earth - TIME. A radio signal between Earth and Mars can take 4 to 24 minutes to travel one way. That means if an astronaut sends a question to Mission Control, it could be more than 40 minutes before they receive a reply, which in an emergency situation is far too long to wait.
To close this gap, NASA and Google are working together on something called the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), an artificial intelligence system for space medicine designed to support astronauts when Earth is too far away to give immediate help. Think of it as a “medical copilot” that will not replace doctors, but instead will help the crew diagnose and manage problems step-by-step using knowledge adapted specifically to space medicine.

Unlike a standard chatbot, the CMO-DA can work with multiple kinds of input. Astronauts might type or speak questions, upload vital signs, or share images from a portable ultrasound. The system then offers possible causes, highlights urgent warning signs, and suggests treatments that match the very limited supplies they have available to them. The big difference from Earth-based systems is that it’s trained with information that reflects spaceflight medical challenges, such as fluid shifts in low gravity, the increased risk of kidney stones, or how certain drugs behave differently in space.
To test its usefulness, NASA and Google have been running the assistant through structured scenarios. These use the same exam style that medical students face, called Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, where candidates are judged on how well they manage a case. The early results look promising, with the AI decision support tool giving safe, reliable advice, and it helps astronauts approach a situation more clearly under stress.

This project is part of NASA’s broader plan for Earth-Independent Medical Operations. For deep-space missions, it has long been recognised that crews need a much higher degree of autonomy, since communication with Earth may be delayed or even cut off entirely—for example, when Mars is hidden behind the Sun. A tool like the CMO-DA gives astronauts a way to stabilise and treat a patient without waiting for ground communication.
It’s important to remember that the system is meant as support and not as an authority. Ultimately, the astronauts in-situ remain the decision-makers. The assistant provides structured checklists, reminders, and treatment suggestions. It can also document everything that was done and prepare a clear report so that, once communication is restored, doctors on Earth can follow-up what happened and advise on next steps.

The future will bring new features, with researchers aiming to link the assistant to onboard sensors, wearables, and imaging devices, and to test it in Mars analogue missions on Earth. The goal is a complete medical system—crew, tools, and smart software working together to make medical autonomy on Mars a reality.
This technology, however, isn’t just for astronauts. It could also benefit people in remote communities on Earth, where medical access and connectivity are limited. In that way, a tool built for Mars missions medical support might improve healthcare for millions here at home.
NASA and Google’s project shows how AI in aerospace medicine is shifting from science fiction into practical support for space medicine—with potential benefits reaching well beyond Mars.

Microbes are generally associated with infection, and the usual response to their mere presence is to eradicate them as quickly as possible. For example, the “no-rinse soap” used during space travel mainly consist of antimicrobials, i.e. chemicals that kill microbes, with the aim to remove bacteria on the skin.
It is correct that microbes can cause disease, but it is microbes that created an environment and an atmosphere on Earth that allow plants and animals to exist. Microbes are literally everywhere, and we ourselves depend upon microbes to keep our external facing surfaces healthy and to help with the breakdown of food in our gut and production of substances that our body needs. The microbes form actual communities with thousands of species in and on us, for example the gut, respiratory and skin microbiomes, and these communities collaborate with our immune systems.

​To give an idea of their importance, data suggest that it is the pollution from antimicrobials that is the primary responsible for climate change because their impact is very broad and reduces the microbial diversity and changes the microbial balance. Similarly, studies indicate that antibiotics have long-term impact on our health, and they have been shown to increase the frequency of cancer, diabetes, asthma as well as functional impairments in children’s development, immune function, and cognition. Poor gut health, which usually means an unbalanced and low diversity microbiome, has also been associated with mental health problems including depression and anxiety as our gut microbiome is responsible for producing substances needed for normal brain function.
On the International Space Station skin issues and problems with wound healing have been reported. Microgravity and radiation have generally been assumed to be responsible for this and the fact, that “no-rinse-soap” is a cocktail of antimicrobials, has received practically no attention. Antimicrobials are traditionally used for treating wounds, but the US FDA reported in 2016 and again in 2022 that they are ineffective in treating wounds, and studies have demonstrated that antimicrobials directly impair healing and that a healthy wound microbiome is required for healing to take place. These novel conclusions banning antimicrobials in skin care and wound healing are further supported by the positive findings with a new technology, MPPT (micropore particle technology), which acts by regulating the wound microbiome without killing anything. MPPT has been able to achieve 100% wound closure rates, including in complicated wounds and in people with impaired immune function. This observation shows that approaches that support the collaboration between the microbes and the immune system can be much more effective than the traditional, old blanket-bombing approach of eradicating all microbes, which renders the skin debilitated and less resilient.

These observations are relevant to space travel, in terms of both the environment onboard and clothing, food and methods of ”washing”. Our bodies have evolved on Earth, where microbes were and are present, and our evolution has benefited from this as the microbes assist in protecting our surfaces and in delivering nutrients and critical compounds needed for our health. This dependence persists, even if we decide to leave Earth for shorter or longer periods of time. It is therefore a necessity, particularly for deep space travel, which does not permit us returning to Earth periodically to update our microbiome, to develop environments and procedures onboard that can sustain our microbial requirements.
These considerations are based on an article recently published in Frontiers in Public Health, which focuses on the role of antimicrobials in causing climate change from severely damaging the Earth’s microbiome. The impact of antimicrobials on the Earth microbiome and the microbiome inside a space station are comparable as they are both closed systems. It is consequently important to consider the essentiality of the microbial environment, when planning human life outside the Earth’s environment.

When scrolling through the endless nonsense recently that appears on Facebook, I came across a rare post of interest detailing the remarkable work of French geologist Michel Siffre, who died a year ago this Sunday (24 August 2024), aged 85 years. In 1972, Siffre conducted an extraordinary isolation experiment in which he lived alone for 180 days in a cave 440 feet underground. He had no sunlight, no clock, and no contact with any other person, having only basic supplies, a sleeping bag, and instruments for recording his activities and observations.
His aim was to study how the human mind and body behave when deprived of all natural time cues. The results of this work, now more than 50 years old, continue to be relevant for research into human endurance, circadian rhythms, and the psychological effects of extreme isolation. They are also especially relevant for human space exploration, with space agencies considering the realities of sending people to live for months, or even years, in sealed environments on the Moon or Mars.

Initially, Siffre relied on hunger and fatigue to regulate his days, but within weeks it was observed that his perception of time changed. He often believed a day had passed when nearly two had gone by. His body abandoned the 24-hour cycle, adopting a 36-hour waking period followed by 12 hours of sleep.
Scientists monitoring the experiment saw this as evidence that humans have an internal clock that can operate independently of the Sun. The changes, however, came with cognitive and psychological costs, like hallucinations, difficulty speaking, memory lapses, and a need to create artificial social interaction, such as talking to insects or to himself. By the time the experiment ended, Siffre believed only 151 days had passed, rather than the actual 180 days.

Life Without a Sunrise - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) see 16 sunrises every Earth day. This constant cycling of light and dark is managed by strict schedules, carefully calibrated lighting systems, and oversight by mission control, ensuring that body clocks remain aligned with a 24-hour rhythm. Without such controls, circadian rhythms can rapidly drift, affecting alertness, decision-making, and even physical health.

The Psychology of Deep Isolation - When considering long-term space missions, the focus is generally on technology, such as rockets, life-support systems and protection from radiation. Nonetheless, isolation and confinement and the psychological effects these have are equally important and can be dangerous. Siffre’s months in the cave showed how being cut off from the outside world can damage memory, disrupt mood, and distort perception.

​Autonomy and Control - Time management in space is both a technical and social challenge. On Earth, Siffre’s experiment had a clear endpoint, and his return could be organised on schedule. On Mars, early crews will have no such guarantee, with no quick return. They may have to decide collectively whether to impose strict schedules, adopt flexible routines based on personal needs, or even invent entirely new timekeeping systems. Each choice will have its pros and cons, for example, synchronising with Earth time might ease communication and data transfer, whereas adopting Martian time could improve alignment with local environmental conditions. But considering Siffre’s research once more, it showed that creating your own time structure can be risky, having the potential to erode cognitive stability and alter social cohesion. The question of who can decide and enforce “official time” in a space settlement is also open to political and ethical debate and will need to be resolved.

​From Darkness to the Stars - Siffre called his cave stay “a slow slide into madness”. He emerged with memory loss and lingering psychological effects, yet he chose to repeat the experience under different conditions, building a valuable dataset on human adaptation to extreme environments.
Today, his work helps scientists understand how people cope, or struggle, in extreme environments. For astronauts, it’s a reminder that training must prepare them not only for technical jobs but also for the absence of natural time cues, monotony, and long periods of isolation. In the vacuum of space or under Martian skies, maintaining a stable perception of time could be as vital to survival as oxygen, clean water, and functioning life-support systems.

Michel Siffre’s dedication to his research pushed the boundaries of both science and human endurance. Few would risk their health, and even their sanity, to reveal how our minds cope with isolation and distorted time. Does it make you wonder how far you would you be willing to go in the name of discovery?

FINAL THOUGHTS
At InnovaSpace, we echo Łukasz’s sentiment: space is not a remote, elite pursuit - it’s woven into the fabric of our daily lives and our global future. It shapes how we live, how we connect, and how we look at the future.
Whether you're an engineer, artist, teacher, policymaker, or simply have a curious mind—there’s a role for you in space.
Want to get involved? Start by visiting events like the European Rover Challenge or following space organisations online.
Join in the conversation because space needs all of us!