Brave space fans can cough up £5000 to live for a MONTH in Spanish cave to ‘experience life on Mars’
ASPIRING astronauts can now fork out nearly £5,000 to experience life on Mars for a whole month.
Holiday website Tripadvisor has created a programme where daredevils can isolate themselves from the outside world in a cave in Spain.
The dank grotto near Bilbao has living conditions almost identical to those on Mars, according to Tripadvisor.
The holiday firm teamed up with Spain’s interplanetary agency, Astroland, for the bonkers project.
The mission takes place in Ares Station, a scientific space station set developed to simulate hostile living conditions on Mars, within a 60m high cave.
Candidates would have to undergo physical and psychological tests before getting accepted onto the 30-day experience.
The programme starts with a three-week training session before participants spend three days in the cave.
During this special experience, the participants receive extensive training, learning how to spacewalk and react in cases of emergency.
They would also wear specially-designed astronaut suits, eat lyophilized food and sleep in small bunk beds.
There is even a leisure area as well as a rudimentary gym.
Mars facts
Here's what you need to know about the red planet...
- Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun
- It is named after the Roman god of war
- The landmass of Mars is very similar to Earth but due to the difference in gravity you could jump three times higher there than you can here
- Mars is mountainous and hosts the tallest mountain known in the Solar System called Olympus Mons, which is three times higher than Everest
- Mars is considered to be the second most habitable planet after Earth
- It takes the planet 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun
- So far, there has been 39 missions to Mars but only 16 of these have been successful
The first mission was already completed successfully last month.
David Ceballos CEO at Astroland said: “I strongly believe Astroland can help out by dropping it’s little grain of sand on experimenting how life on Mars could be when we finally manage to establish permanent human colonies there.
“It is the only private analogous experience of this kind where people of all different backgrounds and profiles can experience it without having to be a professional in the field.
“I am extremely happy for all the interest we are generating especially from the scientific community, everyday we are being contacted by really interested ,highly motivated people.”
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In other news, Nasa recently paid volunteers £14,000 to watch TV in bed for two months to test the benefits of artificial gravity.
SpaceX boss Elon Musk this week unveiled the firm’s new Starship spacecraft built for private round-trips to Moon and Mars.
Earlier this year, Nasa managed to record the incredible sound of a marsquake for the first time – which you can listen to here.
Do you think man will reach Mars anytime soon? Let us know in the comments…
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