Fancy going on a trip to the planet Mars?
The European Space Agency is looking for volunteers to make a ‘pretend trip to Mars’.
The duration of the trip would be two years. Living conditions would include cramped space and pre-packed food, similar to a spacecraft.
The actual journey might as well happen some day. The voyage to the ‘Red Planet’ will surely create a landmark in history.
According to the ESA, the crew traveling to Mars would experience extreme isolation and confinement. Planet Earth will be out of sight. It will take 40 minutes for a radio contact to travel to Earth and then back to the adventurers in space.
ESA, along with the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) have decided to send a joint crew of six people on a 520-day fake mission to Mars, in order to understand how humans might cope in such extreme circumstances.
The ESA sees the journey to planet Mars as one of the last mammoth challenges before mankind and considers it a ‘dream’ yet to be fulfilled.
The imitated journey would follow the mission profile of an actual Mars mission.
It will even include a phase of exploration on the surface of Mars, according to ESA. The project would start with a 105-day study in 2008, followed by the full 520-day study late next year or early in 2009.
A total of 12 volunteers will be required to complete the several test projects included in the program.
The process of selection, according to the ESA, would be standardized to that of ESA astronauts. Although, psychological factors and stress resistance will be emphasized upon in these tests rather than physical fitness.
Mars is approximately one and a half times as far away from the Sun as Earth is. Distance between the Mars and Earth varies.
Planet Mars and Planet Earth were just 56 million km (35 million miles) away from each other in 2003.They were closest to each other in 60,000 years according to NASA. The two planets have been about 380 million km apart, when most distant from each other.
Via : Stuff
Image Credit : Scholastic
