A manned mission to Mars could be decades away. But an international team of researchers will try to capture the feeling of such a mission by locking themselves in a windowless capsule for about a year-and-a-half, the time needed for a round trip to the red planet.

The all-male crew, three from Russia, two Europeans and one from China, won't endure weightlessness in the 520-day programme. But they will live in Spartan conditions of a mock-up spaceship and follow a harsh regimen of experiments and exercise.

The researchers will communicate with the outside world via the Internet, delayed and occasionally disrupted to imitate the effects of space travel.

They will eat canned food similar to that currently offered to astronauts on the International Space Station and take a shower once every 10 days, mimicking space conditions.

Romain Charles, 2010 MARS 500 Crew Member, said, "The team that is being built and the relation (s) that we have together, because of all the experiments that we will have to do, which will keep us busy for that time. So it's not a jail, it's a programme, an experiment. It will be hard I'm sure but we have a target to stay here 520 days and we will achieve it."