clipped from: news.yahoo.com 
MOSCOW - It's a mission to Mars — without leaving Moscow. Russian scientists have finished fashioning a crucial section of a mock spacecraft that will simulate a voyage to the Red Planet, an official at the Moscow institute leading the project said Wednesday.
For at least 520 days, the barrel-shaped metal structure will serve as living quarters for six crew members picked from thousands of applicants around the world for a pretend voyage that in real life may be decades away.
The simulated space flight, to start in late 2008, is meant to set the stage for a trip to Mars by testing the health, performance and crew interaction under the trying conditions of such a journey.
"In order to later help the guys who really do go to Mars, we must model everything on Earth," said Mark Belakovsky, chief manager of the Mars500 project at the Institute of Biomedical Problems, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.