"Pale-faced but smiling, the crew of a long-duration isolation study emerged bleary-eyed to daylight and applause Friday after 520 days locked away in windowless, cramped cells to simulate the length of a journey to Mars The $15 million Mars500 experiment aims to answer one of the big unknowns of deep-space travel: can people stay healthy and sane during six months rocketing to the Red Planet? The six male volunteers were allowed to briefly embrace family and friends before being ushered into a three-day quarantine period at the end of an experiment to recreate the psychological strain of a real Mars mission as closely as possible. Clothed in blue jumpsuits, the would-be astronaut
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-mars-isolation-odd-idUSTRE7A349220111104
