Sergii Iakymov is an aerospace engineer and analog mission specialist with nearly 17 years of experience in space systems, extreme environment operations, and human factors research. He serves as Director of the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) at the Mars Society, where he has conducted over 35 analog space simulations, selecting and preparing multinational crews, overseeing EVA training, and managing the facility off-grid for up to six months per year in the Utah desert.
Beyond operating analog facilities, Sergii has lived inside them. In 2024 he completed a 45-day confinement as a prime crew member of NASA's Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) Campaign 7, simulating a Mars mission in Houston. He subsequently participated in two NASA Artemis EVA pre-breath protocol studies at Johnson Space Center, contributing physiological data to lunar and Martian surface operations planning.
He holds a master's in Aircraft Control Systems and a bachelor's in Aviation and Cosmonautics, both from the National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute."
Sergii's work sits at the intersection of analog operations and human factors: what happens when real people live and work in confined, resource-limited environments, and what that tells engineers designing life support systems. His operational experience at MDRS covers water supply, power management, waste handling, EVA protocols, and greenhouse operations - the same systems space habitat engineers design, but running them in practice rather than on paper.
His participation in HERA and two NASA Artemis EVA studies adds a crew-member perspective: the psychological effects of confinement and communication delays, the gap between habitat design intent and lived experience, the physiological demands of EVA in reduced-pressure environments, and firsthand feedback on what analog habitat designers could have done differently - a perspective rarely available to engineers designing real systems.
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Platform access opens Q4 2026 with first course in Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS). Express interest here and subscribe for enrollment updates.
Platform access opens Q4 2026 with first course in Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS). Express interest below and subscribe for enrollment updates.
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