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The EUROMIR-95 flight was selected as model for the HUBES experiment: a similar duration (135 days), a similar crew (3 men), similar schedule organisation (8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, 8 hours off-duties), similar workload for the crew and the mission control (performance of scientific experiments), similar setup for communication and data processing, and similar layout of the MIR station, as the simulation was performed in the MIR simulator located at the Institute for BioMedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow. The Scientific Programme of HUBES had been elaborated by integration of 31 experiments from more than 80 research proposals from Principal Investigators from Europe, USA and Russia, in domains of Physiology, Psychology, Operations and Technology.

The primarects of the study called ISEMSI (“Isolation Study for European Manned Space Infrastructure”) was the psychological research, with the double aim of collectinuable know-how, and gathering and organizing a community of researchers oriented towards specific space related psychological issues. Six EMSInauts (members of the ISEMSI crew) were locked up in NUTEC's hyperbaric chamber facility an overpressure equivalent to 5 meters depth for a period of 4 weeks. The psychological experiments showed that simple performance, such as reaction time and vigilance, were unaffected during the isolation. However, the more complicated mental strategies showed some temporal changes throughout the 28 days. The perceived workload indicated that the overall load was emotionally, cognitively and physically in the middle range, even though the actual working hours were up to 12 hours. The load did not give any effects either on symptomatology, or on endocrinology and heartrate variability.