After 520 days the Mars 500 mission will end this 4 November. The hatch will be opened and the crew members will at last get out of the modules at Moscow's Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP). Since 3 June 2010 six volunteers have been locked inside a fake spaceship and simulated a journey to Mars and back.

Mars 500 is the most realistic spaceflight simulation possible without leaving the ground. This story recalls this unique experience with words from Romain Charles and Diego Urbina the two European "marsonauts".

More backgroud information can be found on: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars500/index.html

The MPEG-2 files are on the ESA ftp server in the folder entitled : ftp://esa.contentcoders.com/mpeg2/MARS500-28102011/