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Experience ‘Life on Mars’ in a cave in northern Spain for €6,000

The Local Spain
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Experience ‘Life on Mars’ in a cave in northern Spain for €6,000
The 'astronauts' must where space suits outside the living dome. Photo: Astroland

Spain’s Intraplanetary Space Agency is offering wannabe astronauts the opportunity of experiencing life on Mars, without even leaving earth.

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Astroland has teamed up with holiday website TripAdvisor to devise a programme that offers thrill seekers a taste of what it could be like to live in a space station on the hostile red planet.

The programme involves an entire month of training culminating in three days and three nights in the depth of a cave within the mountain in Cantabria, northern Spain, isolated from human contact in an environment which closely replicates the conditions of Mars.

The mission takes place at the Ares Station, a scientific space centre set within a cave measuring 60 meters high and 1.5km long in the hills near in Arredondo, where participants will learn more about not just the physical, but the societal impact living in such a colony would have," according to the website. 

Candidates have to apply for their position on the expedition and pass physical and psychological tests before they are accepted. Special equipment has to be worn and no contact is allowed with the outside world.

A test crew has already completed the “test mission” but now the agency is looking for adventurers to take part in the five expeditions planned before the end of 2019.

But candidates have to apply for their position on the expedition and pass rigorous physical and psychological tests to be accepted.  The experience involves an intensive three week course of remote training followed by three days of physical and psychological training at Astroland facilities.

This is where participants will learn how to carry out spacewalks by participating in speleology (caving) training, natural buoyancy tests that simulate the states of weightlessness, and will also receive training in emergency plans which will allow them to act in the case of adverse circumstances.

 Only then can the team enter the cave for their three day “life on Mars” experience donning specially-designed astronaut suits in all but the “living dome”, which is equipped with ventilation and hydration systems.

They will be expected to survive on plants grown in a laboratory under impossible conditions replicated from Mars as well as life capsules and lyophilized food.

“Be part of a small number of people who have the capacity to change not only their own lives, but also the course of humanity!” states the blurb on the Astroland website.“We invite you to join us on this adventure which will allow us to test everything the human race will need in 2035, right now in 2019."

Each mission has a maximum capacity of 10 people and costs €6,000 per person.

READ ALSO: Remote Spanish village opens Europe’s longest zip wire

 

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