Two teams face plants, worms, year of inner space
China started a yearlong experiment on Wednesday using an airtight advanced life-support system to house eight volunteers as a way to help with the nation's goal of long-term manned deep-space exploration, the project's operator said.
The Lunar Palace 365 experiment was launched at the Lunar Palace 1 bioregenerative life-support laboratory in Beihang University in Beijing.
The eight volunteers, all postgraduate students at the university, are divided into two teams of four and will undertake the experiment in three shifts - one team entered the lab on Wednesday morning and will stay for 60 days before the second team takes over. They will live in the lab for 200 days before the first team will complete the remaining 105 days, the university said.
