In the United States launched an experiment to simulate a flight to Mars lasting 365 days

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    Very early in the morning (01:00 GMT) this Saturday, NASA launched a new experiment in the long-term isolation of a team of "astronauts," which should be the longest of such experiments already conducted. In this case, the emphasis is not on the technical component of the project, but on the study of precisely the human aspects of prolonged solitude in the harsh conditions of nature and limited resources. The venue of the experiment will be one of the extinct volcanoes in Hawaii - Mauna Loa -, the solitude and landscape of which perfectly matches the "Martian conditions."

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    The team of participants in the experiment. The leftmost is an employee of auxiliary personnel who does not directly participate in the project.

    The team of participants in the experiment consists of six people. These are four Americans: pilot, architect, journalist, soil scientist. They are a German physicist and a French astrobiologist. They will live in a specially created dome-shaped building, whose diameter is 11 meters and a height of 6 meters. Leaving his team can only in full-size suits and for a limited time. As personal space, participants are assigned a small room with small beds for sleeping and a table for work. Internet use is limited (30-year-old German woman Christiane Heinicke, graduate of the Technical University of Ilmenau, will leadblog ), it will be possible to communicate with NASA and relatives through video messages. Food supplies consist of canned foods and freeze-dried foods. A typical menu would look something like this: canned tuna and cheese powder. What does the interior of the “Martian” house look like. NASA is experimenting with long-term isolation of people on an ongoing basis. The last such imitation of an 8-month “flight” , which was carried out in the same place and with the same equipment, ended on June 13 of this year. More lengthy experiments were carried out in Russia : in 2011, the Mars 500 project was completed, in which six participants lived in a test module for 520 days.

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