The Mars500 project crew has returned to Earth after 520 days of living inside steel containers to simulate the length of a journey to the Red Planet. Three Russians, two EU citizens and a Chinese national spent 17 months in a 550-cubic-meter mock spaceship at a Moscow research institute as part of the $15 million Mars500 experiment aiming to investigate the psychological and physiological effects... 

A new word is launched in Russia: a Marsonaut. The six members of the simulation programme for a visit to Mars have started the third phase of the experiment, namely a Mars landing followed by the first Mars walk. The Russian flag now flies firmly and proudly on the Red Planet! Work is under way in Russia in the first active tests in the simulation phase of the manned space flight to Mars. The multinational... 

The crewmembers will soon step out on a simulated Martian surface. The crew of the Mars500 simulated mission to the Red Planet have reached a key milestone. The six men, sealed since June inside steel containers representing a spacecraft, have “gone into orbit” at their destination. Three of the group will now “descend” to the planet, don real spacesuits and walk on the “surface”...