At the present time for forming of food rations of the crews of space ships and stations, specially developed for these purposes products are used in the package allowing to cook food in conditions of weightlessness (to warm in an electrical food heater and restore dehydrated products with hot or cold water).

One of the main distinctive peculiarities of the developed for “Mars-500” project ration is its long-term autonomy. From this an objective follows of creation of food rations preserving biological full-value and microbiological safety during the whole duration of the experiment (520 days) for the crew consisting of 6 people taking into account impossibility of additional delivery of food stores.

On February 25 in IBMP degustation session began, the aim of which is presentation for assessment of the investigators of the whole assortment of products, from which it is supposed to create individually-oriented food ration for the crew.

Doctor Alexandr Agureev (head of the department of nutrition in IBMP and the head of works on nutrition in “Mars-500” project) informed the investigators about the fact that in the given experiment for each stage of the experiment its own variant of food ration would be used:
The stage of simulation of the flight to Mars. The ration is formed from the products (including semi-finished products of dishes), manufactured by a series of European firms («Apetito», «Kellogg», «Hipp», «Coppenrath», «Enervit», «Knorr»). This part of the ration is supervised by German scientist Doctor Jens Titze from the University in Erlangen.
The stage of landing to Mars. The second variant of the ration will have 2 kinds. For the three crew members who will simulate descent and going to the Martian surface, the food ration will be formed from the products ready for consumption without heating and it will only foresee consumption of hot drinks. For these purposes real space products used during forming of food ration for the crews of transportation vehicle “Soyuz” are most suitable.  The rest three crew members who will simulate flight on the Martian orbit, will eat the ration of the first and third variants.
The most difficult task is forming of the 3rd variant of food ration for the stage of simulation of the flight from Mars to Earth. It is connected with the fact that the main mass of products for cosmonauts has shelf life in temperature conditions of the environment from 1 to 2 years. However, assortment of products having 2-year shelf life is extremely limited.

In 520-day experiment this food ration will be formed from products produced by food enterprises of Korea, Italy, China and Russian (“Gala-Gala” firm and enterprises of food industry Michurinsk city).

The picture story can be looked here.

On February 25 Institute of biomedical problems has visited representatives of German aerospace agency (DLR) - director of space programs Christoph Hohage, specialist on international cooperation Rainder Scharenberg, program manager Peter Graf and manager Michael Turk visited Institute for biomedical problems. The aim of the visit was familiarization with the ground-based experimental facility "Mars-500".

The picture story can be looked here.

“Mars-500” project got close to the beginning of the main stage – 520-day isolation.
The experiment on simulation of a manned flight to the Red planet, conducted by State scientific center of the Russian Federation – Institute for biomedical problems of RAS under the auspices of Roscosmos and Russian academy of sciences with wide international participation, consists of three main stages. The first two stages of the experiment, with the duration of 14 and 105 days of complete isolation were finished successfully in 2009.
For preparation of the third, main stage of the program “Mars-500” – 520-day experiment, the Institute has selected a team of volunteers:

1. Egorov Boris Afanasievich (44 years old), engineer (Russia),
2. Zhirnov Andrey Alexandrovich (30 years old), engineer (Russia),
3. Kamolov Sukhrob Rustamovich (32 years old), surgeon (Russia),
4. Sinelnikov Mikhaill Olegovich (37 years old), engineer-electromechanic,
5. Sitev Alexey Sergeevich (38 years old), engineer-ship-builder (Russia),
6. Smolevskiy Alexandr Egorovich (33 year old), general physician (Russia),
7. Sukhov Alexandr Victorovich (32 years old), engineer (Russia),
8. Archanmael Gaillard, (34 years old), engineer (France),
9. Jerome Clevers, (30 years old), engineer (Belgium),
10. Diego Urbina, (27 years old) ,engineer (Italy),
11. Wang Yue (27 years old), investigator, (China).

The international team of the volunteers began to train in the frameworks of the project “Mars-500” in the Institute for biomedical problems of RAS. The training began with getting familiar of the team with the medical-technical facility, where 520-day isolation will take place and getting familiar with the scientific program of the experiment.
The scientific program, consisting of 95 experiments was discusses and approved by the Scientific council of IBMP. It includes the following sections:

• Psychological and psycho-physiological investigations;
• Clinical and laboratory-diagnostic investigations;
• Physiological investigations;
• Sanitary-hygienic and microbiological investigations;
• Operational-technological investigations.

Two conference in December:

1. Conference on Biomedical Issues on Long Lasting Manned Mission - Pisa, December 8-9, 2009

Detailed program can be looked here.

2. Workshop "Nutrition And Health Status Monitoring In Human Space Missions", Bologna, December 10th, 2009

Detailed program can be looked here.

We have opened an official blog - http://imbp-mars500.livejournal.com/

105-day isolation Experiment has been finished on July, 14th, 2009.

The picture story can be looked here.