An experiment based on a manned flight to Mars is planned to be launched in March 2009. Ten candidates have been selected for participation in the 105-day-long experiment.

Among the ten selected candidates are six Russians, and four representatives of the European Union.

Candidates were selected according to questioning and complex medical examination in the Central Clinical Hospital of the Russian Academy of Sciences and in the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

The final crew will include four volunteers from Russia and two from the European Space Agency. Those volunteers who will not be part of the crew will help carry out the experiment.

The primary goals of experiment are the physiological and psychological adaptation of the crewmen to the conditions of closed and isolated space and studying the interaction of the crew with the personnel of the experiment’s control centre under hanging conditions of communication.