A manned space mission to Mars may be decades from take off, but an international team of researchers are set to get a very close experience - without leaving Earth.
Six men will lock themselves up in a windowless mock space ship for one and a half years. This roughly equates the time needed to travel to and from "The Red Planet".
The Mars-500 experiment hopes to help a real space crew of the future cope better with long term isolation.
The researchers will have to eat canned food similar to that currently on offer to astronauts on the International Space Station.
Showers will only be available once every ten days, further mimicking space conditions.
A Chinese researcher, three Russians and two Europeans will make up the team for the study which will take place in Moscow.
French crew member Romain Charles said: "It will be hard I'm sure, but we have a target to stay here 520 days and we will achieve it".
A similar experiment took place back in 1999-2000 but ended badly when two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls.
