Mars 500 Lands

Diego Urbina, wearing a Russian Orlan spacesuit on his simulated Marswalk. Image Source: ESA.

Back on 3 June 2010, a 6-person team began a simulated round trip to Mars in a sealed capsule just ouside Moscow. Today, they are 'landing' and their capsule will open in one hour. This experiment was dubbed Mars 500, and is a cooperative project of the European Space Agency with the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP). I blogged about the start of the crew's 'journey' here. The experiment was set up to test whether a team could cope with the rigours of living together in the confined operating environment necessary to travel to Mars and come back. They performed several tests to assess their responses. One section of the environment they inhabited simulated the surface of Mars, where the crew performed a number of planned experiments.

At 11:00 CET, the crew's capsule will open and they will report on the psychological experience of a simulated manned journey to Mars.  You can watch live-streaming of the opening of the capsule starting at 10:50 CET at the European Space Agency Website here. CET is GMT+1 hour.

The crewmembers are:

Romain Charles, 31-year-old French engineer.

Sukhrob Rustamovich Kamolov (Сухроб Рустамович Камолов), Russian surgeon.

Alexey Sergeyevich Sitev (Алексей Сергеевич Ситёв), Russian engineer and commander of the mission.

Alexandr Egorovich Smoleevskiy (Александр Егорович Смолеевский), Russian physiologist.

Diego Urbina, 27-year-old Italian-Colombian engineer.

Wang Yue (王跃), 27-year-old Chinese instructor at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center.

The experimental isolation chamber. Image Source: ESA.

This is the crew's timeline:

3 Jun 2010: Beginning of experiment - hatch closed, lift off

15 Jun 2010: Undocking from orbital assembly laboratory

23 Jun 2010: Transfer to heliocentric orbit towards Mars

24 Dec 2010: Shifting to spiral orbit towards Mars

1 Feb 2011: Entering circular orbit around Mars

1 Feb 2011: Mars Lander hatch opening

8 Feb 2011: Completion of loading, Lander hatch closure

12 Feb 2011: Undocking, landing on Mars

14, 18 and 22 Feb 2011: Egresses on Martian surface

23 Feb 2011: Ascent, beginning of quarantine

24 Feb 2011: Docking with interplanetary craft

26 Feb 2011: End of quarantine

27 Feb 2011: Habitation module hatch opening

27 Feb 2011: Crew transfer to Habitation module

28 Feb 2011: Lander loading with trash ends

1 Mar 2011: Hatch closure, Lander undocking

2 Mar 2011: Entering into spiral orbit away from Mars

7 Apr 2011: Transfer to heliocentric orbit towards Earth

15 Sep 2011: End of communications delay, switchover to voice communications

13 Oct 2011: Shifting to spiral orbit towards Earth

4 Nov 2011: End of 520-day study, crew landing on Earth

Two of the crew have condensed their 520 days into a video that lasts 15 minutes, which you can see below.

Video Source: Youtube.

Caption for the above video: ESA's Mars500 crewmembers Diego Urbina and Romain Charles recorded 15 video diaries from all phases of their simulated mission to Mars, and here comes a compilation of their YouTube videos.