‘Mars mission’ at half-way point after eight months

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.

Outfitted in heavy white space suits and clunky boots, the Russian and Italian volunteers left their capsule and took their first careful steps on the red sands of Mars — all without ever leaving a Moscow research centre.

“We have made great progress today,” Vitaly Davydov, the deputy head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, pronounced as live footage of the virtual space walk beamed into the country’s real-life space control centre.