- A group affiliated with the United Nations is launching a fake Mars and moon colony.
- Called M.A.R.S., the faux habitat is located in the remote countryside of southern Poland.
- Six volunteer astronauts will work and live inside M.A.R.S. for two weeks, starting on July 31.
- Organizers hope to use the data and lessons they learn to support real missions to the moon and Mars.
Atop a forested ridge in southern Poland, a mission on the surfaces of both Mars and the moon is about to launch.
The two-week mission is just a simulation, of course, since no entity on Earth is prepared to inhabit deep space. But the experiment — called the Poland Mars Analogue Simulation 2017 — will study a group of six volunteer “analogue” astronauts as they work through a realistic schedule of space exploration, then provide those findings to anyone who’s drawing up crewed missions beyond Earth.
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