A top space official says Europe and Russia will follow up on their simulated 520-day mission to Mars with a real flight to Mars and back — although there's not yet any time frame set for the mission.
The pledge came on Wednesday from Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the European Space Agency, during his visit to Russia's MAKS air show near Moscow. He said ESA and the Russian Federal Space Agency would "carry out the first flight to Mars together," according to a report from the RIA Novosti news agency.
Dordain was quoted as saying that the Mars500 simulation was a factor in preparations for a human mission to the Red Planet. Mars500's six crew members, all male, have been cooped up for 14 months inside an isolation chamber at Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems. This week, the European-Russian-Chinese crew passed the 437-day milestone set by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov aboard Russia's Mir space station in 1995. Polyakov holds the record for the longest continuous time spent in space, and if the Mars500 sextet had actually been in space, they would now be the champs.
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