Four Chinese unpaid worker have completed a 180 - day stop inside a mock - up space vehicle on Earth , as China prepares for deep space missions to the Moon and mayhap Mars .
The experimentation run by the Astronaut Center of China start on June 17 , with three men and one woman taking part . Called “ Space 180 ” , it involved keeping the four people isolate in a 1,340 three-dimensional - meter environment to simulate what a deep infinite journey might be like . A journey to Mars is estimated to take about 200 Day .
" Our squad is great,”saidTang Yongkang , unpaid worker team drawing card , after they had dispatch the six - month delegacy on December 14 , local time . “ Together we finished the task through unvoiced - workplace and with boost and support for each other . We are the best . ”
During their fourth dimension within , the squad grew vegetable and exercised regularly , both important tasks for a abstruse quad commission . They also performed Tai Chi to make do with the isolation , and acquit out a issue of biological tests .
food for thought , water system , and oxygen were all used and recycled in a control environment , something that will be necessary on missions to the Moon or Mars .
The military volunteer “ taikonauts ” ( astronauts ) were take from a pocket billiards of 2,110 candidate who apply in May 2015 . They civilize 25 different kinds of plants , including sweet-flavored Solanum tuberosum and peanuts , and tested 635 pieces of equipment , reportedYibida . There were more than 10 Chinese and external creation involved in the experiment , let in Harvard University and the German Aerospace Centre .
The experimentation is not too dissimilar to ones perform by ESA and NASA . The former was calledMars-500 , when a work party of six was kept set apart for 500 days in 2010 and 2011 , with their project including a pattern “ Marswalk ” . More recently , the 4th NASA - fundedHI - SEAS studytook place in Hawaii , with the in style gang of six emerging from their home ground on Mauna Loa in August after a year in isolation .
China has been ramping up its space exploration endeavour in late years , include sending two taikonauts to an observational blank station calledTiangong 2earlier this twelvemonth . The Chinese National Space Agency ( CNSA ) has its center on sending humans to the Moon in the near time to come , and probationary plans to send people to Mars .
This latest test further cements their resoluteness to do so . How useful all these separate ground - based pretence are is up for debate , but maybe in the not too distant future tense they ’ll prove to have been worthwhile .
