Official News page 4

REAL LIFE NEWS: MARTIAN "ASTRONAUTS" RETURN TO EARTH

by Hazed

The fake astronauts pretending to travel to Mars in a simulated mission have emerged from their isolation and landed back on Earth again.

Mars500 was a project to find out how humans would cope - both physically and mentally - on a space voyage lasting more than a year. It was set up at a Moscow institute. Six men climbed into the simulated spacecraft 17 months ago, the hatch was sealed, and since then they have been cut off from the world. Communications with mission control were subject to the same delays that real messages would have encountered as the ship travelled further from Earth.

Now they are "home" again, they will go into quarantine for several days to have medical checks.

By all accounts, this experiment has been a success. Scientists are very happy with the data they have acquired, and are looking forward to designing even more realistic scenarios.

There are tentative discussions about carrying on a similar isolation experiment in orbit by using the International Space Station. That would add the one extra thing that Mrs500 was unable to simulate: the micro-gravity of a real trip to Mars.

Read more about the triumphant return of our brave fake astronauts here.

You can also read about five ways a real mission to Mars would be different from the simulation here.

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