A Mission of the Mind 意志的考验
Six Astronauts Are Tested to the Limit 对6名宇航员的极限考验
Have you ever been on a long-haul flight? How did you pass the time? Perhaps you watched an in-flight movie or read a book.
Well it would have to be a very long book to keep you amused for 520 days. That's how long six men are going to be sealed away from humanity in a warehouse in the suburbs of Moscow from tomorrow.
No, this isn't another weird reality TV show, but an experiment from the European Space Agency and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems to test the psychological impact of a manned mission to Mars.
The six astronauts will live in conditions approximating a real space mission. A 550-cubic-metre mock-up within the warehouse includes an interplanetary spaceship, a Mars lander and a Martian landscape.
The group of six - which includes one Chinese astronaut, Wang Yue - will work, relax and sleep in eight-hour shifts, take two days off a week and shower once every ten days.
All communication with mission control will be subject to a twenty-minute delay to reproduce the effects of distance.
After 250 days, the astronauts will divide into two groups. Three will move to the Martian surface simulator for a month while the rest will remain 'in orbit'. Then the six will be reunited for a 240-day return journey to... well, the outside world.