Mock Mars Mission Blasts Off

Experimenters will spend 105 days locked in fake spaceship

By Nick McMaster, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 31, 2009 12:26 PM CDT

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Mock Mars Mission Blasts Off — Researchers, from left, French Cyrille Fournier, and Russians Sergei Ryazansky, and Oleg Artemyev seen at a news conference in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 31, 2009. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)

Europe launched its first shot at a manned mission to the Red Planet today—by locking six scientists in a tiny capsule in Moscow for 105 days to simulate the voyage, the BBC reports. The volunteers, who can leave the experiment but score $20000 if they make it, will perform similar maintenance tasks and experience the same isolation and claustrophobia as real astronauts. “It is really like a real space flight without the weightlessness and the danger to our lives,” said Sergei Ryazansky, one of the would-be astronauts.

“On the inside, we will have a lack of incoming information, so it’s the science of sensory deprivation,” Ryazansky said. That includes a 20-minute delay for any communications with command to simulate the time needed for voice to travel to Earth and back. This experiment is a test run, with, a more serious 520-day simulation planned for next year.
(More Mars stories.)

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