NASA considering space station for Mars dry run

Mar 20, 2012 By MARCIA DUNN , AP Aerospace Writer

The International Space Station may provide the setting for a 500-day pretend trip to Mars in another few years.

NASA said Tuesday that consideration is under way to use the space station as a dry run for a simulated trip to and from Mars. It would be patterned after Russia's mock flight to Mars that lasted 520 days at a Moscow research center. Six men were involved in that study, which ended late last year. They were locked in a steel capsule.

NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, says before astronauts can fly beyond low-Earth orbit, they'll have to spend more than six months aloft at a time. The human endurance record of 14 months was set by a Russian cosmonaut aboard the Mir space station in the mid-1990s.

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User comments : 3

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Vendicar_Decarian

0.2 / 5 (36) Mar 20, 2012

If there ever was proof that the ISS isn't a white elephant, this is it.

Oh wait....

hopefulbl

2 / 5 (1) Mar 20, 2012

why a dry run? Just load it up, attach a lander, and send the whole thing over and back. Use Belbruno's equations to send it using low energy gravity well transfer

Vendicar_Decarian

0.1 / 5 (35) Mar 20, 2012

Dry runs are necessary because wet runs are smelly and leave stains.

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