Mars Missions: Sergii Iakymov on Space, Science & Survival

Susan Wise: Welcome to Stars Launch Pod, space Technology and Research Sciences, brought to you by star sciences.org where we connect, collaborate, and accelerate. I’m your host, Susan Wise and pleased to have with us Aerospace engineer and director of Mars Desert Research Station, Sergii Iakymov. Welcome.

Sergii: Thank you, Susan. It is nice to be here.

Susan Wise: Oh, we’re so glad to have you on board, and especially when it comes to talking about Mars. I love all of this. It’s so exciting right now, you know,

Sergii: Everyone wants to get on Mars.

Susan Wise: We do. Tell us a little bit more about what you do.

Sergii: Yeah, my current, my current role is, um, basically to be involved in, uh, analog space simulations. And, uh, I, hold the position of director of Mars Desert Research Station, which is, uh, research facility in the middle of the UDA desert.

It’s really remote environment and extreme as well. And, um, we do any kind of human factor and, uh, geology and maybe technology testing on that particular site. And, uh, it’s very interesting job. I get got to see a lot of people from around the world, like from Europe, from isa, from different universities, and see what kind of project everyone have in mind and want to test to advance human space exploration.

Susan Wise: So what do you currently

Sergii: I.

Susan Wise: on right now to further the space industry?

Sergii: Well, um, my particular role just run, uh, operations, so I make sure that every scientist, student or engineer who comes to the station have everything what they need to have. To conduct that research. So my current role just to, , run the station, make sure that it operates normally in nominal and, it basically, it’s, very hard to do in that environment, in the middle of the desert and, um.

Yeah. Also I support any kind of, logistic. I do select the crews who come to the, to the station, and they also, personally do some minor repairs, maintenance if I am on site and it’s necessary. And beside that, I also, do some work with the NASA Johnson Space Center as a test subject. And, in last year I took a part in two different analog simulation.

Uh, one of them is, um. Human exploration research analog, it’s Hera. So I spent 45 days in a confined environment

Susan Wise: Wow.

Sergii: JAC. So we, we simulated, , our expedition to Mars, some time on Mars and fly back to Earth. And, second one, I took, part of, physiological testing. Also at jc, it calls exploration atmosphere.

We did test, some protocols for Artemis three, moon Expedition.

Susan Wise: Wow, you are very busy and a kind of a jack of all trades actually having to work on things sometimes. I have to mention recently, my husband and I went on a camping trip, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Badlands. Um, we

Sergii: Well, I think I shared about Badlands, but I

Susan Wise: What

Sergii: haven’t.

Susan Wise: around at this, it’s so, it it do, it looks otherworldly.

It looks like it’s Mars. To me, it looks like it’s not here on this planet. I can only imagine what it looks like at your station in the desert.

Sergii: Yeah, it’s it’s very remote, very isolated. It’s actually looks like Mars because of, red Clay from Jurassic era when dinosaurs lived on earth. And we even have, dinosaur quarry just a few miles away from the station.

Susan Wise: Wow.

Sergii: Yeah.

Susan Wise: Bryce Canyon a little bit.

Sergii: yeah, it’s, it’s very Mars like environment.

Susan Wise: What has been your biggest aha moment? Like something that just made you go Yes.

Sergii: Well, my big, I think my biggest aha moment was, realization how much needs to be done to safely conduct a space expedition. And how many things, small things needs to be done according to regulation, specs, starting from the very beginning, like even just material manufacturing. And, to bring, an analogy, it’s like an opening.

a, can a worms where each worm has own can of, of worms.

Susan Wise: even more

Sergii: Yeah.

Susan Wise: Serge. What has been your biggest challenge and um, how did you overcome it?

Sergii: Uh, my biggest challenge probably was when I moved to US more than eight years ago. I started to work in, American aerospace industry and I met just so many specs, regulations that I never seen before in my life. And, um. There was only one way to overcome it, just to work a lot and study. And the company where I work in the beginning, did, uh, metal manufacturing and I.

I ask to try every position in the company. So I learn everything like how to try drive a truck forklift, how to set up and fix, uh, laser cutting machine, for example.

Susan Wise: Wow.

Sergii: Uh, yeah. And, sometimes I ran like 16 hour shifts just to , be able to understand everything.

Susan Wise: Wow. That’s a lot of work. You just kind of have to jump in and go for it. I guess,

Sergii: Yeah, I agree.

Susan Wise: what would, what would be, uh, a piece of advice that you would like to share with our listeners?

Sergii: Piece of advice. I think in my 15 years plus career, I am very grateful that I had an opportunity to work on the, uh. Something I love to do. So my advice, find what you love to do, stick to it, and no matter what, um, do it. It, it’s, it’s a simple advice, but it could be not easy to do sometimes. Depends on many things.

And become a great expert in that area.

Susan Wise: I wanna go back real quick to your, when you were a test subject for, guess, for nasa and you

Sergii: Yes.

45 days, you said,

Yes, correct.

Susan Wise: Just gimme an example of what an average day would be like for you.

Sergii: Uh, the average day was, for example, I wake up 7:00 AM with the music, from mission control, and then have a brief, , like, uh, saliva test, sometime blood test before your, uh. Breakfast, then have a, I would say it, it couldn’t be a space breakfast, but unfortunately in that simulation we didn’t have a lot of space food.

Most of, of that food was just basically, uh, camping food, just freeze dried food, stuff like that. Yeah. And uh, then

Susan Wise: be an issue We’re gonna have to grow our own food and be able to sustain lives.

Sergii: yes, I agree. Yes. And then. The day starts, you have, your schedule, the same software. What astronauts have on board of on ISS. It’s basically, it moves from one side of, uh, of your screen to another. In there is the red line, which you need to, uh, make sure that you catch up with that red line and you have to work fast.

And, uh.

They have you on

Susan Wise: a schedule.

Sergii: Yeah. And then, there are many tasks. For example, a, virtual EVA on Mars. We had, uh, four crew members. Two crew members played EVA members in the in VR glasses. And basically we’ve been walking on Mars in VR environment and other two, are, crew members, they’ve been, drone pilots. They’ve been, basically flying drones.

And next to those first two crew members, and also playing as, mission control for current, EVA. And it was usually about two hours per day, but it was one of the, all the funniest exercise we had and that environment is, is very realistic. And, uh, we had a lot of, human factor research, a lot of questionaries, like crazy amount of questionaries.

Uh, one another, exercise was, we’ve done it’s, work with, current arm simulator, the same astronaut have astronaut have on ISS. And we needed to catch, cargo spaceship and, do it like 15 times in a row and then jump into the, questionaries like, uh, cognitive testing and do it right away and see how all of that stress affects our judgment.

I would say, we also had a lot of technology demonstration, like, um, augmented reality glasses we needed to test and, other augment reality stuff. We had a small hydroponic where we. Grow some lettuce, but we weren’t allowed to eat that lettuce just to grow it and set it out for testing.

And we also had a very fun, task to grow. Triops shrimp, it’s like, a desert shrimp that lives in the, in the ponds in the desert. They only live like for 30 days. And we had a task to grow the shrimp in, in the small fish tank.

Susan Wise: Yeah.

Sergii: And that was, one of another funniest in, task that we had during that mission.

Susan Wise: Never name your fish. Never give them names. That’s what I’ve always learned.

Sergii: We made that mistake. We gave all of them names.

Susan Wise: No, don’t do that.

Sergii: Yeah. Well, it was what, it was very sad when they all died, they died because, uh, we had a power outage during the mission and they needed to have a specific water temperature. And during that outage it could change and they, they didn’t survive that.

Susan Wise: Uh, I mean, and it makes you realize just how delicate that situation is. Those are things you have, I mean, that’s kind of a, a good thing that had happened ’cause it was an opportunity to learn. So, yeah. That’s

Sergii: Yeah. Yeah.

Susan Wise: before we wrap up here, I do wanna ask if you have maybe a past or present passion project, something that you’re very passionate about and means a lot to you.

Sergii: There is is one project I. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut, and I still, yes, I still have the dream and I still want to, uh, do it and, uh, well, we shall see how it goes.

Susan Wise: I think you’re becoming fully prepared, so I, I don’t, I think I, I bet it happens. I’ll bet you’re right here and now that it happens, I hope it does

Sergii: Thank you. Thank you.

Susan Wise: Alright

Thank you so much Sergii Iakymov joining us Aerospace engineer and director of Mars Desert Research Station. We’re so glad to have you on today.

Sergii: Thank you so much, Susan. It was a real pleasure to speak to you.

Susan Wise: Now you’d be sure and join us where we connect, collaborate, and accelerate. We’d like to invite you to join star sciences.org to receive a free one year membership. Enter the promo code, friends, 3, 2, 1. That’s Friends, 3 2 1 star sciences.org. And if you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review, subscribe and until next time, keep looking up.