Mars500 "lands," Crew pale but healthy. What you missed this week.

The fake mission to Mars at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, Mars500, ended a week ago.  After 520 days in isolation, the six-member crew emerged from the first successful full length simulation of the journey to Mars. Family and friends waited in the wings as the hatch opened and the healthy but pale crew members were quickly whisked away for medical examinations. All were reported in peak physical and psychological shape, which bodes well for future trials.

This mission was the first of its kind to examine the possibility of a manned Martian flight. This simulation not only served to investigate the effects of long isolation periods on human health, but also served as a means to test ground-based control center operations. The facility consisted of four hermetically sealed habitat modules and a connected external module for the Mars excursion portion of the trip. The crew worked five day work weeks as astronauts, busying themselves with maintenance, science experiments, and exercises. The crew spent all but thirty days of the mission in transit to Mars or back home, stopping to explore the "Martian" surface for only a short while.

Although communications were available, emails, videos, and messages from loved ones were brought to the men on delay to mimick the real delay experienced in space. One crew member admitted that the video game Counter Strike played a hefty role in staving off boredom. However, crews on the ground kept them on their toes with malfunctions and power outages, fabrications created to look at their performance under pressure. Of course, this study leaves out many factors at play in a real mission to Mars, such as weightlessness, but plans are already in the works for future missions in orbit around the Earth. Though we may be decades away from a real Mars mission, this week we are one step closer to the Red Planet.


In case you missed it:

Rhinos are airlifted to safety, one glimmer of hope after the loss of two rhino species this week

Toxoplasmosa just got more terrifying

We got buzzed by a very large chunk of rock

Sickle-cell protection from Malaria solved


Keep on keepin' on science lovers!