A crew of six, including two Europeans, will begin next month a simulated mission to Mars in a mockup that includes an interplanetary spaceship, a Mars lander and a martian landscape. The Mars 500 experiment, as long as a real journey to Mars, will be second to none as the ultimate test of human endurance.

The ESA-selected Europeans have now been chosen among 4 candidates who have been training at the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow for several weeks. Diego Urbina, 26, has Italian-Colombian nationality and a wide experience in the space field. Romain Charles, 31, from France, is a quality manager at Sotira, a company producing composite panels.