Simulating a voyage to Mars, under lockdown

Can you imagine being stuck inside a small, sealed room under constant surveillance? Would you be able to endure being locked away with a few other people with no way out for months at a time? It’s not a prison sentence, it’s part of a new experiment to simulate the deprivation that astronauts would experience on a voyage to Mars.

Today, six men will be sealed inside a pod for eighteen months at the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow. Researchers will monitor them physically and psychologically to see how humans will react to a prolonged space journey. The BBC’s Richard Galpin was on the scene in Moscow and spoke with The Takeaway as the participants were about to enter the probe.