After 257 days in a locked steel capsule, six researchers on a 520-day mock flight to Mars have finally ‘landed’ on the Red Planet.
The all-male crew - three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian-Colombian - has been inside a windowless capsule at a Moscow research centre since June.
Today their simulated flight arrived at Mars and two crew members, Italian Diego Urbina and Russian Alexander Smoleyevsky, emerged from their spacecraft to walk on the 'surface' of Mars.
It was a big step for the six-man team locked up for two-thirds of a year, but a relatively small step
Launch: The volunteers prepare to enter the Mars500 simulation spacecraft in June
The researchers are now due to spend two days researching the 'planet' before beginning the long ‘return flight’ to Earth, expected to be the most challenging part of the mission.
Like a reality television show, or even the 1978 movie Capricorn One, the astronauts are observed by behavioural specialists at all times.
Their mission aims to help real space crews in the future cope with the confinement and stress of interplanetary travel.
The crew members communicate with the outside world via e-mails and video messages - occasionally delayed to give them the feel of being more than a few yards away from mission control.
They eat canned food similar to that eaten on the International Space Station and shower only once a week.
Their 3.6metre-wide and 20metre-long craft is parked in a Moscow car park next to a block of flats.
It contains six tiny sleeping pods with cot-like beds, a living room, a eat-in kitchen, a working zone, a toilet, a laboratory and greenhouse.
None of the men have considered abandoning the mission, although they are free to walk out at any time, mission director and former cosmonaut Boris Morukov said last month.
‘They are still motivated, but there is a certain fatigue, which is natural,’ he said. ‘It will be very tough on the boys because of the monotony.
‘The fatigue and the thought that the mission is over can be fraught with negative consequences.’
The Mars-500 experiment is being conducted by the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, the European Space Agency and China's space training centre.
In an effort to reproduce the conditions of space travel, with the exception of weightlessness, the crew has living quarters the size of a bus connected with several other modules for experiments and exercise.
A separate built-in imitator of the Red Planet's surface is attached for the mock landing.
The crew are Frenchman Romain Charles, 31, and Italian-Colombian Diego Urbina, 27, who are engineers by training. China's Wang Yue, 26, is an employee at China's space training centre.
The 38-year old Russian captain, Alexey Sitev, has worked at the cosmonaut training centre and the two other Russians, Sukhrob Kamolov, 32 and Alexander Smoleyevsky, 33 are doctors.
A real mission to Mars is decades away because of its huge costs and major technological challenges.
Scientists have still got to work out how to create a compact shield that would protect the crew from deadly space radiation.
Small step for mankind: Journalists at the Korolev Space Mission Control Center outside Moscow watch Italian Diego Urbina and Russian Alexander Smoleyevsky emerge from their spacecraft
It has taken the men eight months to reach their destination. After two days spent researching the 'planet' they will begin their long journey to Earth
So near, yet so far: Despite the simulation a real mission to Mars is likely to be decades away
