MOSCOW, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- Russia plans a 500-day space flight experiment in 2006 to prepare the way for a manned mission to Mars, the Moscow Times reports.
"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006," Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy director of the Russian Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, told a Russian-American working group last week, according to the paper.
"Any medical and biological experiments made on board the International Space Station aim at long-distance space flights of the future," Ilyin said.
Russia has logged far more long-duration space flights by its cosmonauts through the 1980s and 1990s than the United States has, some of them well over a year in duration. The medical data gained from these missions is regarded as essential preparation for any future manned missions to Mars or any other planets in the Solar System.
