The crew of the Mars500 stimulated mission on Saturday landed on the "surface" of the Red Planet.
The six-man multinational crew has been sealed since June inside a mocked-up spaceship without sun or fresh water.
"The stimulated touchdown was successfully completed at noon Moscow time [15:00 GMT]," said a spokesman for Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems that runs the project with the participation of the European Space Agency (Esa).
On February 14, three of the group - Alexander Smoliyevsky, Diego Urbina and Wang Yue - will descend onto the planet, don spacesuits and walk on its "surface," which in reality will be the sandy floor inside a large hangar in Moscow.
After 30 days working on the Red Planet, the crew will then embark on a 240-day return trip to Earth.
The 520-day Mars500 project is designed to investigate how humans cope with psychological and physiological stress on a lengthy spaceflight.
MOSCOW, February 12 (RIA Novosti)
