European Space Agency (ESA) launched Tuesday, at the 47th Paris Air Show taking place at the Parisian suburb of Bourget, an appeal for applications to select 12 candidates for simulated missions to planet Mars, which are expected to start in 2008 or early 2009 for a duration of between 105 and 520 days.

According to ESA, the selection procedure of the candidates is comparable to that of European astronauts, and the selected candidates will be confined for the whole duration of the mission in a series of interlocked modules installed at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP), in Moscow.

The candidates will cut off from all contact with the outside world except by radio communication, while signals they will send will take about 40 minutes to reach the control center or their families, which is actually the same time it takes for a radio signal transmitted from Mars to reach the Earth, according to ESA.

People.com.cn, 20 may 2007
http://english.people.com.cn/200706/20/eng20070620_385861.html