Inside The Habitat: SOLIS100 with Dr. Angelique Van Ombergen

This week on Inside the Habitat, Aspiring Martians takes a closer look at SOLIS100, a European Space Agency isolation study conducted by the German Aerospace Center at its :envihab aerospace medicine research facility in Cologne.

SOLIS100, short for Study of Long-term Isolation, placed six carefully selected participants from six European countries into a closed, controlled environment for 100 days. The goal was not to recreate one specific Mars mission, but to better understand how prolonged isolation, confinement, limited resources and restricted social contact affect human health, behavior, performance and team dynamics during future deep-space missions.

The study builds directly on SOLIS8, an eight-day pilot conducted in 2025 that tested the facility, equipment, procedures and protocols that would later be used for the full 100-day campaign.

During SOLIS100, the crew followed tightly controlled schedules, conducted scientific research, exercised daily, maintained their living environment and worked with limited resources while researchers gathered data on areas including sleep, cognition, mood, physiology, microbiology and crew cohesion.

Joining the episode is Dr. Angelique Van Ombergen, ESA’s Chief Exploration Scientist. With a background in medical sciences and neuroscience, Angelique previously studied how astronauts’ brains adapt to spaceflight and now oversees scientific activities supporting human and robotic exploration from low Earth orbit to the Moon and eventually Mars.

Together, we explore why 100 days is scientifically useful, how isolation studies complement other spaceflight analogs, what ESA hopes to learn from crew dynamics and how this research may help shape the way future astronauts are selected, trained and supported.

Because the spacecraft may be complicated.

The humans inside it may be even more so.