After more than eight months flying to the Red Planet, the isolated Mars500 crew are approaching their goal and some of them finally put their steps onto a mock-Mars surface on 14 February. br Mars 500 is the most realistic spaceflight simulation possible without leaving the ground: its six volunteers are locked inside a sealed nest of modules at Moscows Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) for a total of 520 days, the time it would take to fly to Mars and back. br This story gives the status on the experiment and before the simulated landing on Mars.