June 21
PARIS (AP) - The European Space Agency is looking for 12 volunteers with planetary vision who want to be on the cutting edge and don't get bored easily.

They will make a simulated mission to Mars that will last up to 520 days in "extreme isolation and confinement."

The Paris-based agency, known as ESA, is working on the Mars500 project with the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow and the simulated mission will be conducted there.The volunteers will investigate the "human factor" of a trip to the Red Planet - "a journey with no way out once the spaceship is on a direct path to Mars," ESA says.

The experiment will emphasize psychological factors, including stress resistance. The goal is to test how the volunteers hold up in nearly a year-and-a-half of close confinement, in cramped quarters with others and when communications with Earth can take 20 minutes to reach their destination - each way.

The simulation is to take place in a series of connected modules, mimicking life in a spacecraft on a trip to Mars, including once it has landed on the planet. The routine includes scientific experiments.

It doesn't include full-time weightlessness, however. "Except for weightlessness and radiation, the simulations will be as close to a real Mars mission as possible," the ESA said.

The living quarters will include 30-square-foot rooms for each crew member, a kitchen-dining room, living room - and one toilet. No shower is included, and water supply will be limited.Food will be predefined and carefully rationed.

Special training that precedes the simulations will be as similar as possible to that given to astronauts.

Launch date for the first of the shorter simulation voyages is mid-2008, and late 2008 or early 2009 for the full simulated trip to Mars.

Calls for candidates for the Mars mission went out Tuesday. By Thursday afternoon, they had received over 2,000 applications.

Candidates must be 25 to 50 years old, in good health with work experience in one of several scientific fields, such as medicine, biology, computer engineering or mechanical engineering, the application says. Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Britain and Canada will be considered.
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