Russia may repeat mars-500 simulation

Russia may repeat the Mars-500 experiment simulating a crewed flight to the Red Planet on the International Space Station (ISS), the head of the Russian Space Federal Agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin said on Thursday “Mars-500 was a very useful thing in terms of studying people's psychology…We are now seriously considering the possibility of repeating this experiment in space,” Popovkin said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio, adding that Moscow is now in talks with NASA and the European Space Agency. The unique Moscow-based Mars-500 experiment was completed on November 4. It attempted to recreate at least some of the conditions of a flight to the Red Planet by locking six men away in a mock spacecraft. They spent 520 days in an environment simulating space flight. The six volunteers - researcher Alexander Smoleyevsky, flight engineer Roman Charles, crew commander Alexei Sitev, medical doctor Sukhrob Kamolov, and researchers Diego Urbina and Wang Yueh - were isolated from the outside world in a specially designed complex simulating a spaceship.