science:

For 520 days, since June 2010, six would-be astronauts have been undergoing a simulated mission to Mars at an experimental facility in Russia. The project, which is a collaboration between the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems and the European Space Agency (ESA), aims to study the psychological and physiological effects of isolation beyond the six-month rotation of the International Space Station. All communication between the team and the outside world happened with a twenty-minute delay, simulating the lag inherent in communicating over cosmic distances, and the crew spent half their days performing scientific experiments. The aim, of course, is to plan for a real manned mission to Mars. Today, the hatch opens and the isolation period ends. ESA will stream the opening, which happens at 11:00 am CET, which at the time of writing is about 1 hour 20 minutes from now.