The Russian space agency is looking for volunteers for an experiment simulating a mission to Mars for 520 days. The announcement of the simulation was made on the website of the Russian space agency
Russian Space is looking for volunteers for an experiment simulating a mission to Mars for 520 days. The announcement of the simulation was made on the website of the Russian space agency.
The "flight" will be conducted at the Institute of Medicine and Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in northern Moscow. The "Marsnauts" will spend 250 days in a so-called flight to Mars, and will return to Earth in the last 240 days. The length of the assignment is 520 days with an option to extend it to 700 days.
During the "flight", the crew will be able to communicate with the "control center" via e-mail. Inside the ship there will also be video cameras that will be used for communication.
The staff will work five days a week, and will be prohibited from smoking or drinking alcohol. During the experiment, the participants will also experience several emergency plans to test the effectiveness of the team's response.
The purpose of the simulation is to investigate how crew health is affected by a long space mission. The trial is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2007.
At the same time, NASA Director General Michael Griffin announced that the agency will begin in 2007 evaluating possible approaches to sending humans to Mars, but he does not foresee a manned journey to Mars in the next twenty years.
"I do not want to leave my position without at least a preliminary planning of the architecture of the mission to Mars" said Griffin. In fact, the flight to Mars will only be possible after achieving the return mission to the moon, which is planned no later than 2020, and therefore Griffin does not foresee the flight to Mars before the end of the twenties.
