THESEUS

Towards Human Exploration of Space: a EUropean Strategy

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Space missions in Earth orbit have demonstrated that men can survive and work in space for long durations. However, there are pending technological, medical and psychological issues to be solved before adventuring in longer duration space missions. Furthermore technological breakthroughs, e.g. in life support systems and recycling technologies are required to reduce the costs of these expeditions. Solving these issues will need scientific and technological breakthroughs of interest for clinical and industrial applications and also allow identifying the relevance of these questions to health issues on Earth. Despite existing ESA or NASA studies or roadmaps Europe still has no scientific and industrial roadmap. The THESEUS objective is to develop an integrated life sciences research roadmap enabling European human space exploration in synergy with ESA, taking advantage of the European expertise and identifying the potential of non space applications and dual research and development. It will (1) identify disciplinary research priorities; (2) focus on fields with high terrestrial application potential; (3) build a European network as the core of this strategy. This will be achieved by setting-up and coordinating 15 Expert Groups of European and international experts, ensuring that complementary expertises are gathered and that experts coming from non European countries and from the industrial sectors are included. They will be asked to develop their activities and recommendations based on the scenario proposed by ESA Space Exploration Architecture (human presence in Low Earth Orbit, return to the Moon and human exploration of Mars). The work plan is structured to develop a survey of the state of the art, an improved focus on the relevance of the relevant research for current and upcoming health challenges on Earth and otential bio-medical application, a detailed set of disciplinary priorities and an integrated roadmap providing strategic orientations for research.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Space missions in Earth orbit have demonstrated the ability of humans to live and work in space for long periods of time. EU funding has enabled the development of a European strategy for reaching more distant targets.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Scientists initiated the EU-funded project 'Towards human exploration of space: a European strategy' (THESEUS) to develop a scientific roadmap for European human space exploration in the solar system. Near-Earth objects, the Moon and Mars are among the first targets.

Currently, the prospects for a manned Mars exploration mission are limited by factors such as prevention of bone loss, protection against ionising radiation and impaired performance during long missions. In addition, technological breakthroughs in life support systems and recycling are required to reduce the cost of long-duration manned missions.

THESEUS pulled together more than 120 international experts forming 14 thematic expert groups (EGs) and, through online consultation, supplemented their opinions with those of the scientific community at large. The result was the identification of 99 key scientific priorities comprising important challenges in 5 areas of human spaceflight research. The research areas consist of integrated systems physiology, psychology and human-machine systems, space radiation, habitat management and healthcare.

Based on the recommendations made at an integration workshop in June 2011, the THESEUS roadmap was further organised around three main themes. These are adaptation to the space environment, countermeasures to multiple stressors, and necessary tools and techniques. The official THESEUS roadmap and individual EG reports were made available on the project website in March of 2012.

THESEUS has established an integrated life sciences research roadmap and a European network to coordinate and implement the strategy. The project has taken advantage of international expertise and evaluated the relevance of proposed priorities to Earth-based and industrial applications. As a result, THESEUS should ensure effective and efficient use of resources for the highest impact of space research and development activities.