Six volunteers return from 'mission to Mars'

MOSCOW: Six volunteers from Russia and Europe yesterday emerged from a capsule inside a Moscow research facility where they have been locked away for the last three months to simulate a mission to Mars.

The six stepped out of the module smiling and in apparent good health after 105 days cut off from the outside world at the isolation facility at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP).

Dressed in blue overalls like real-life spacemen, the four Russians, Frenchman and German were handed bouquets of flowers and waved at well-wishers as they stood arm-in-arm outside the capsule.