As per the media reports, a simulated mission to Mars would soon be commenced by a crew of six, including two Europeans, in a mockup that consists of an interplanetary spaceship, Mars Lander and Martian landscape.

The experiment dubbed the Mars500, which will test the human endurance till end, will be as long as a real journey to Mars.

The crew via this experiment aims at following a full mission to Mars and back as perfectly as possible without even going to there. It will in next summer in a special facility in Moscow when Mars500, which is the first full-duration simulated mission to Mars, will initiate.

The mission will be completed in 520 days, which includes, 250 days for trip to Mars, days on the surface and 240 days for the return journey.

Then in 2009, the second phase followed when four Russian and two European crewmembers were shut into the facility for 105 days on March 31.

Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP), together with the extensive participation by ESA as part of its European Programme for Life and Physical Sciences (ELIPS) to get ready for future human missions to the Moon and Mars, are conducting the Mars500 experiment.

The crew, for the conduction of the experiment, would be hermetically isolated in confined space. They will b provided with limited consumables and communication only by means of the Internet, sporadically disrupted and with a 20-minute delay, as for a real Mars mission, due to the distance between the spacecraft and Earth.

During the entire mission, the crew members will be observed and their psychological, medical and physical signs would be recorded.

The crew members will have a similar diet to that of the crews on the International Space Station (ISS) and the tasks performed would also be comparable to those of the ISS astronauts. However, the tasks would be much longer time: maintenance, scientific experiments and daily exercise.

The crew members will require adhering to a seven-day week with two days off, except when special and emergency situations are simulated.