mars500

Mars travelers return! Well, kinda

It was touch and go for some time.

Would the hatch open? Would little green beings with strange tartan skirts emerge? Would they demand to see William Shatner?

No, I have not received a supply of newly harvested experimental tobacco. I am merely celebrating the safe return of the Mars500 probe from, well, Moscow.

That sentence does make sense. Well, shortly it will.

You see, many might have missed that on June 3 last year, six very hardy souls committed themselves fully to being sent to Mars, without leaving Russian soil.

Mars500 was an experiment in endurance, isolation, and insanity-prevention.… Read more

When Moscow stands in for Mars

A little over a year ago, six men emerged from an isolation facility at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems, apparently none the worse for their 105 days locked together in close quarters.

In fact, they were relentlessly chirpy throughout the three-and-a-half-month sequestration, in spite of square footage that was probably less than that of your first apartment out of college, where you probably had fewer roommates. And many more windows.

But that was just the warm-up act. In early June, another sextet of 20- and 30-something males ducked their heads through soon-to-be-sealed hatches in the Moscow facility for the … Read more

Mars500 project gears up for the long haul

Psyched for a long, long trip to Mars but can't stand the wait for someone to actually mount such a mission? The next best thing might well be to lock yourself in an isolation chamber in Moscow.

The European Space Agency is gearing up for exactly that. As part of its Mars500 project, the ESA will be conducting a 520-day earthbound sojourn at Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems starting this summer. At that time, the six participants in the simulated mission will sequester themselves in a mock interplanetary spaceship, with complementary mock Martian lander.

The endurance exercise, originally … Read more

Mars500 sojourners emerge from isolation

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, perhaps, we'll all be as excited about people landing on Mars as we were 40 years ago about the first moon landing. But don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, mission-to-Mars dreamers and wannabes will have to make do with Earth-bound exercises such as the European Space Agency's Mars500 program. Earlier this week, a group of six Mars500 participants emerged from a mission-to-Moscow mock-up meant to simulate part of what will eventually be a very long journey to the Red Planet.

The Euro-sextet ended their simulated Mars mission on Tuesday, after 105 … Read more

The happy campers of the Mars500 mission

Prolonged enclosure in any indoor space, especially a small one, generally produces a condition known as cabin fever--you get cranky and restless and even a bit claustrophobic. Playing board games and tending to the houseplants gets old fast.

So what exactly are they pumping into the air in the several oversized tin cans of the Mars500 project to make the astronaut role players grin so much and so broadly? The six men are locked into a 200-square-meter space to simulate the conditions of a trip to Mars and back, and they're already three weeks into a 105-day stay. (Later … Read more