In May, six people will climb into a steel container in Moscow and the door will be locked tight. For the next 18 months, the “crew” will live inside this windowless environment – four interlocked modules measuring, in total, 550 cubic metres – as they attempt to simulate the conditions onboard a spacecraft on a round-trip to Mars.
It sounds like the ultimate TV reality show: six different personalities forced to get along while their omnipotent masters outside issue them with a daily set of tasks and instructions. The experiment is one of the most fascinating and demanding psychological tests you could ever dream up. But, if we are ever to get to Mars, these are exactly the sort of conditions that a crew will have to suffer and survive.