Mars500 project simulates living on Mars by ESA

Post date: Jun 1, 2010 4:26:07 PM

Six would-be astronauts

will this week begin a 520-day mock space voyage to simulate a mission to Mars. How will they cope with the huge psychological pressures?

The cosmonauts - three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian - will live and work as interplanetary travellers, spending eight hours a day working on maintenance and scientific experiments, eight hours at leisure and eight hours sleeping.

Organisers at the European Space Agency and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems hope that the project will offer an insight into how such a mission would function.