Photos: Mars500 project preps for spaceflight

The Mars500 project is a collaboration of the European Space Agency and Russia's Institute for Biomechanical Problems, with this year's practice sojourns taking place at an IBMP facility in Moscow. The first one, a relatively short 105-day trial run, got under way March 31. The second, which is set to begin late in 2009, will last the full 520 days of a mission to Mars.

Photo by ESA - S. Corvaja

Caption by Jonathan Skillings