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Simulated Mars mission 'lands' back on Earth

4 November 2011 Last updated at 10:01 GMT

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Six men locked away in steel tubes for a year-and-a-half to simulate a mission

to Mars have emerged from isolation.

The Mars500 project, undertaken at a Moscow institute, was intended to find out

how the human mind and body would cope on a long-duration spaceflight.

It is a venture that has fascinated all who have followed it around the globe.

The study even saw three of the men carry out a pretend landing on Mars,

donning real spacesuits and walking across an enclosed sandy yard.

MARS SIMULATION PROJECT

Mars500 crew

Aim was to gather knowledge and experience to help prepare for real Mars

mission

This meant probing the psychological and physiological effects of extended

isolation

Project simulated outward cruise, landing operations and return journey to

Earth

About 100 experiments were planned; crew partook in a series of medical studies

Resources restricted at departure; crew had to manage food consumption

Text communications only were possible with the ground; max 25min delay in

round signal time

"The international crew has completed the 520 day mission," Russian commander

Alexey Sitev announced after stepping through the openned hatch of the "Mars500

spaceship".

"The programme has been fully carried out. All the crew members are in good

health. We are now ready for further tests," he told those gathered to witness

the emergence.

The rest of the crew - Russian Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Sukhrob Kamolov;

Europeans Romain Charles and Diego Urbina; and Chinese national, Wang Yue -

smiled and waved to family members who had come to greet them at the Institute

of Biomedical Problems (IMBP).

The crew has now been taken away into quarantine for medical checks.

For much of the Mars500 project, the six had only limited contact with the

outside world. Their spaceship had no windows, and the protocols demanded their

communications endured a similar time lag to that encountered by real messages

as they travelled the vast distance between Earth and Mars.

At its maximum, the round travel time for a question to be sent and for an

answer to be received was about 25 minutes.

This meant having to resort to text media, such as email and Twitter, and video

blogs.

Asked before he came out what he was most looking forward, Italian-Colombian

Diego Urbina told BBC News via Twitter: "Meeting my family, calling my friends,

bumping into strangers, going to the beach."

THE LAYOUT OF THE MARS500 'SPACESHIP'

Mars 500 facility (BBC/Esa)

MEDICAL MODULE: A 12m-long cylinder that acted as the laboratory. It was also

the sickbay were a crewmember to become ill

HABITABLE MODULE: The main living quarters. The 20m-long module has beds, a

galley, a social area. It also acted as the main control room

LANDING MODULE: This was only used during the 30-day landing operation. Three

crewmembers visited the "surface of Mars"

UTILITY MODULE: It is divided into four compartments, to store food and other

supplies, to house a greenhouse, a gym a refrigeration unit

SURFACE MODULE: To walk across the soil and rocks of Mars, crewmembers put on

Orlan spacesuits and passed through an airlock

There were many aspects of a real mission that could not be simulated in a

Moscow suburb, of course - such as weightlessness and the dangers associated

with space radiation.

But scientists have expressed great satisfaction with the data that has been

acquired, and are looking forward to applying the lessons learned to ever more

realistic scenarios.

The men carried out tests to see how they were coping in the confined space

During the 17-plus-months of their virtual voyage, the crew took part in

various studies to assess the effect their isolation was having on their

psychological and physiological well being.

Their stress and hormone levels were monitored, as were their sleep patterns,

and their moods. The men also carried out an assessment of the benefits of

dietary supplements in such situations.

"I can only praise the crew for their courage and their great spirit," said Dr

Martin Zell from the European Space Agency, which was a major sponsor on the

project.

"They were a brilliant team - they really will finish as a crew and not six

individuals," he told BBC News.

Tentative discussions have now begun between the partners on the International

Space Station (ISS) about the possibility of doing some sort of isolation

experiment in orbit.

Initially, this might simply involve introducing a delay in communications to

controllers in Moscow and Houston, US. Ultimately, it could also involve

removing crew members into separate modules to give them a taste of what the

Mars500 participants have gone through.

Certainly, the partners want the ISS to become more of an "exploration testbed"

in the decade ahead - a platform to try out the new approaches and new

technologies that will help humans move deeper into the Solar System.

Mars simulation We may still be decades away from a real mission to the Red

Planet

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk