Six crewmembers of a simulated mission to Mars - nearing "return" to Earth. Credit: ESA
Six crewmembers of a simulated mission to Mars have been isolated in a special facility near Moscow since June of last year.
The crew will “arrive back on Earth” on November 4 and go into quarantine for four days for medical checks.
Mars500 is the first full-duration simulation of a human mission to the red planet, living and working in a mock-up that mimics almost all aspects of a real trek to Mars – except for weightlessness, radiation and actual interplanetary spaceflight.
During the nearly 1.5-year duration of the mission, the international crew – made up of two Europeans, three Russians and one Chinese — have “flown” to Mars, “landed” on their destination planet and made several spacewalks on a look-a-like martian terrain.
That expeditionary crew has endured monotony, delayed communications and complete lack of daylight in their windowless habitat in Moscow.
The crew consists of European Space Agency (ESA)-selected Diego Urbina (Italian/Colombian) and Romain Charles (French); Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexei Sitev and Alexandr Smoleevski from Russia; and Wang Yue from China.
ESA has been working with Roscosmos and Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in the Moscow-based Mars 500 project.
By Leonard David