A GROUP of volunteers isolated from the outside world for eight months stepped out on a mock-up of Mars yesterday, reaching the half-way point of their experimental “voyage” to the Red Planet.

A MANNED mission to Mars may be decades away, but an international team of researchers will try to experience what one might be like by locking themselves up in a windowless capsule for a year-and-half – the time needed for a round-trip to the red planet.