Researchers locked into windowless rooms to simulate 520-day mission to Mars

The six-man international team will test the effects of claustrophobia and isolation in Moscow.

The Associated Press
3:20 AM PDT, June 3, 2010
MOSCOW --

An international team of researchers in Russia on Thursday began a grueling simulation of a flight to Mars that will keep them locked in a cascade of windowless modules for 520 days -- the amount of time required for a journey to the Red Planet and back to Earth.

Although the experiment, conducted jointly by Russia, China and the European Space Agency, will not involve weightlessness, it will try to tackle some of the psychological challenges of a real flight to Mars -- particularly the stress, claustrophobia and fatigue that a real space crew would face during interplanetary travel.

The six-member, all-male crew -- three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese -- expressed confidence that their mission would be a success.

Diego Urbina, the Italian-Colombian member, said the mission would mean "accomplishing dreams about the future, doing something that no human has done before."