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Today, afterwards months of anticipation, three adventurous astronauts set bottom on Mars—or rather, a darkened, sand-filled allowance advised to simulate Mars.

The campaign accomplish up bisected the aggregation of the Mars500 mission, a activity advised to abstraction the cerebral furnishings of a year-and-a-half long, deep-space boating to the red planet.

(Related: "Astronauts Could Ride Asteroids to Mars, Abstraction Says.")

Since June 2010 six men—three Russians, two Europeans, and one Chinese—have been active in abreast in a 19,423-cubic-foot (550-cubic-meter) "spaceship" alfresco Moscow, accomplishing aliment work, administering experiments, and aggravating to avoid off apathy by arena Rock Band and account the complete works of Gabriel García Márquez.

The aggregation is fabricated up of volunteers, some with no real-life amplitude acquaintance but all with applicative skills, such as engineering and medicine.

(Related: "Why Did 400 People Volunteer for a One-Way Trip to Mars?")

Radio communications with activity leaders are delayed to simulate the communications lag amid Earth and Mars. Illnesses are handled by a aggregation affiliate confined as the ship's doctor. The alone aliment comes from packets of dehydrated meals.

Since the activity started, scientists accept been accidentally belief aggregate that happens to the bogus astronauts, from their centralized bacilli to how they breathe at night. But now, afterwards added than 250 canicule beneath the microscope, the astronauts are the ones assuming the experiments.

The spaceship entered a apish apogee about Mars on February 1, and three of the astronauts entered a abstracted alcove meant to simulate a Mars lander. These aggregation associates "landed" on Mars on Saturday.

Today the bear opened for the aboriginal of three planned extravehicular activities, or EVAs, on the "Martian" surface.

The allowance that's continuing in for Mars is advised to attending like the apparent about Gusev Crater, the landing armpit of NASA's Mars departer Spirit.

Over the abutting two weeks, the astronauts will aggregate clay samples, arrange magnetometers to abstraction the apish Mars's alluring field, and bulb civic flags, said Oleg Voloshin, a columnist administrator with Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems, which is accustomed out the experiment.

The astronauts who abide "in orbit" will drive a basic automatic departer about Mars in article like an "advanced computer game," said Christer Fuglesang, administrator of the European Space Agency's addition to the Mars500 mission.

Mars500 Aggregation Facing Force Adjustments

In alertness for landing, the three Mars walkers slept heads-down, to simulate the furnishings of activity from zero-G to an ambiance with gravity—albeit a third that of Earth's, Fuglesang said.

The allowance itself won't simulate Martian force or weather, but astronauts will abrasion spacesuits during the EVAs that are about two-thirds lighter than absolute spacesuits, to bottle the apparition that gravity's cull is weaker on the faux red planet.

(Related: "Astronauts' Fingernails Falling Off Due to Glove Design.")

Fuglesang, a above ESA astronaut, addendum that it's not accessible to acclimatize to actuality in force afterwards months of free-floating.

Though the Mars500 astronauts' anxiety accept remained absolutely on the arena the absolute time, the alteration is important to simulate, because "when you acreage on Earth, there are bodies demography affliction of you. There will be cipher on Mars to advice them."

The Mars campaign will accomplishment their abstracts and backpack up their samples by February 22. The lander will again acknowledgment to the orbiting spacecraft—all after affective an inch—and it will be time for the six astronauts to alpha the almost 200-day adventure home.

The men on the basic mission accept captivated up appreciably able-bodied so far, Fuglesang added.

"One could accept accepted that there would accept been confrontations, but it's been actual good."

The acknowledgment trip, however, is accepted to be added psychologically arduous for the crew, with the action of the Mars landing abaft them.