ON Friday, Nov 4, 2011 an event occurred which passed relatively unnoticed in the media, as six volunteer "astronauts" stepped outside of a facility in Moscow in which they had spent the last year and a half, simulating a manned mission to Mars: Moscow \'Mars mission\' ends after 520 days The project was a joint mission of the Russian space agency and Europe's space agency, and included one Chinese, one French, one Italian, and three Russian volunteers. The article specifically notes that a mission is planned for sometime in the mid-2030s, after a "return" to the Moon. So what's … [Read more...]