From Russia to Mars and back without leaving Moscow. That's what Russian scientists have in mind after creating a section of a mock spacecraft that will simulate a 520-day roundtrip mission, an official at the Moscow institute leading the project said Wednesday.
The barrel-shaped metal structure will serve as living quarters for six crew members picked from thousands of applicants around the world. The simulated space flight will begin late 2008, and is meant to set the stage for a trip to Mars by testing the health, performance and crew interaction under the trying conditions of such a journey.
"In order to later help the guys who really do go to Mars, we must model everything on Earth," said Mark Belakovsky, chief manager of the Mars500 project at the Institute of Biomedical Problems, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The living quarters are larger than a railroad car and will be part of a windowless warren of five linked modules being built at the institute off a busy street near central Moscow.
The institute and the European Space Agency, or ESA — a "strategic partner" in the project — are separately considering applications for the mock voyage as well as two shorter, preliminary experiments — also with crews of six. The ESA last month announced it was looking for candidates.
Once the main study begins, the crew members will remain aboard for the duration barring emergencies, Belakovsky said. "They will have taken off, and that's it."
But with six people cooped up in close quarters for nearly a year and a half, sparks are likely to fly.
"If you and your girlfriend were to shut yourselves in a room for three days, five days, a month — believe me, you would have a million problems. Either she would strangle you or you would strangle her," Belakovsky said.
Source:Xinhua/agencies
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