Russia – The six men involved in the Mars 500 experiment have just left their sealed laboratory in Moscow. They had not seen sunlight for more than 3 months.

March 500 was a simulated space mission organized by the European Space Agency (ESA). Its goal: to reproduce a future voyage of astronauts towards red planet.

The six crew members were used as guinea pigs for researchers who studied the psychological and medical aspects of such a long mission. The volunteers have spent 105 days in a large capsule isolated from the outside world.

They were subjected to simulated stressing as the launch, travel, arrival, transfer to the surface of the red planet and, of course, the expected return. The tasks required were the same as those performed by astronauts participating in a future Mars mission.

The six volunteers have kept the moral, even if some have lost all sense of time: one of them was believed to have spent three weeks in a special laboratory. At the beginning of 2010, another complete simulation of mission about Mars will be established. Six other candidates will remain locked in the same module for 520 days.

First stage of Mars-500 experiment over