520 days Mars mission compressed into a 15 minute video

If you’ve ever wondered what a mission to Mars would be like, well you won’t have to anymore. The folks over at the European Space Agency held a simulated mission to Mars called Mars500, where six astronauts were placed inside a space shuttle and had their daily lives recorded on video. While certain aspect of Mars couldn’t be simulated i.e. low-gravity conditions, in my opinion they did a pretty good job of recreating what life would be like on a space mission to the red planet. Did I mention it was a 500+ day journey?

While on the simulated space mission, the astronauts had to perform over 100 experiments with limited consumables, deal with communications to Earth being artificially delayed, and even handle a power failure. According to the ESA, the astronauts performed exceptionally well during the flight, though they’ve still got more tests, debriefings and evaluations to go through, until early December when the mission officially ends.

Check out the video of the trip, which shows 520 days compressed into 15 minutes. For more information and footage, head over to the official website of the ESA.