- Mars500 is a simulated mission to the red planet
- It's designed to see how people cope with the conditions of a real trip
- Six cosmonauts have been shut up in the simulator since June 2010
- Monday they pretend to walk on the surface of Mars
Moscow (CNN) -- Cosmonauts are due to walk on the surface of Mars Monday, nearly a year into a mission to the red planet. Unfortunately, it's only a simulation, designed to test what would happen on a real flight to Mars.
It's an attempt to re-create the experience of a manned trip to Mars, with an international team of researchers locked in a windowless capsule for about a year and a half -- time required for a round trip to the next planet out in the solar system.
Starting in June of last year, the all-male "crew" of six -- three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese -- began spending 520 days in the cramped and claustrophobic conditions of a special facility in Moscow, following a strict regimen of exercise and diet.
They "landed" on Mars on Saturday, and on Monday, Russia's Space Mission Control is beaming out a signal of the simulated Mars walk.
Organizers at the European Space Agency and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems hope the project will shed light on the physical and psychological effects of the long isolation that future Mars astronauts will experience.
"This study is not useful only for Mars, but also for life on Earth," 27-year-old Diego Urbina, the Italian-Colombian participant, said in a news release when the mission began last year.
The researchers communicate with mission control via the internet, with occasional disruptions and a 20-minute delay to imitate the effects of space travel.
They are performing tasks similar to astronauts at the international space station, such as maintenance and scientific experiments, but for a longer period of time.
They follow a seven-day week with two days off, except when special and emergency situations are simulated.
The latest isolation test is the last and longest part of the Mars500 experiment, which began in 2007.
The first phase was a 14-day simulation that mainly tested the facilities and operational procedures. The second phase followed in 2009, when four Russian and two European crew members were shut into the facility for 105 days.
Actual missions to the red planet have thus far been unmanned.
Journalist Derrick Ho contributed to this report.
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