ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION
The six-man Mars500 crew 'returned to earth' on Friday, opening the hatch of their simulated spacecraft for the first time in 520 days, and ending an isolation experiment designed to test the strains of interplanetary travel.
The crew, made up of men from Europe, China and Russia were locked up in a 160-square-metre module, parked at an institute on Moscow's outskirts for 17 months - a time period meant to reflect a real journey to Mars - 250 days in flight, 30 days in orbit and surface landing and 240 days for the return flight to Earth.
Daily routines in the capsule were structured to resemble a real space mission. The crew had a schedule filled with scientific experiments, maintaining their 'spaceship', and communicating with the outside world with time delays up to 20 minutes long.
They conducted regular experiments, attempting to test one of the biggest unknowns of deep space travel: the mental and physical strains of such a journey.
