Six people are about to shut themselves inside a dome in Hawaii for a year, in the longest US isolation experiment yet aimed at helping NASA prepare for a pioneering journey to Mars.
The crew includes a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans - a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil scientist.
They are based on a barren, northern slope of Mauna Loa, living inside a dome that is 36 feet in diameter and 20 feet tall.
In a place with no animals and little vegetation around, they will close themselves in at 3:00 pm Hawaii time on Friday (0100 GMT Saturday), marking the official start to the 12-month mission.
The men and women have their own small rooms, with space for a sleeping cot and desk, and will spend their days eating foods like powdered cheese and canned tuna, only going outside if dressed in a spacesuit, and having limited access to the Internet.
So what kind of person wants to spend a year of their life this way?
Crew member Sheyna Gifford described the team as "six people who want to change the world by making it possible for people to leave it at will," she wrote on her blog, LivefromMars.life.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11832279/Nasa-Mars-isolation-experiment-starting-in-Hawaii.html
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