© Christian Gahl
A one-story, 3500-square-metre, state-of-the-art space, :envihab (from the words ‘Environment’ and ‘Habitat’) will be used to explore the effects of extreme environmental conditions on humans and to determine possible countermeasures. Eight separate modules, built according to a ‘house within a house’ design, include a short-arm human centrifuge to, for instance, conduct cardiovascular, bone and muscle research, laboratories for studying the effects of oxygen reduction and pressure decrease on test subjects, MRI/PET analysis facilities, rooms for psychological stress simulations and rehabilitations, microbiological and molecular biological research tools, as well as places to house and monitor test subjects. At :envihab, the Institute will conduct supertargeted research in space and flight physiology, radiation biology, space psychology, operational medicine, biomedical research and analogous terrestrial situations.