MOSCOW — An international team of researchers climbed into a set of windowless steel capsules Thursday to launch a 520-day simulation of a flight to Mars intended to help real space crews of the future cope with the confinement, stress and fatigue of interplanetary travel.
The six-member, all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese will follow a tight regimen of experiments and exercise under video surveillance.
The Mars-500 experiment — conducted by the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems in cooperation with the European Space Agency and China’s space training center — aims to reproduce the conditions of space travel, with the exception of weightlessness.
“For me, it will be mainly my family and the sun and fresh air,” French participant Romain Charles said when asked by reporters what he will miss most during the nearly year and a half of confinement.
The researchers will communicate with the outside world via the Internet — delayed and occasionally disrupted to imitate the effects of space travel. They will eat canned food similar to that offered on the international space station and shower once a week or so. Crew members will have two days off a week, except when emergencies are simulated, though they will still be in the capsules.
