China to End 180-day Human Space Survival Experiment

Four Chinese volunteers, who have been living inside a sealed space capsule in south China’s Shenzhen City to test technologies that could support China’s deep-space exploration projects, are set to complete their 180-day survival experiment on Wednesday. The volunteers -- three men and one woman -- are implementing a survival experiment that will cast light on the effectiveness of how food, water, and oxygen can be used and recycled under controlled conditions. It was designed to test the “controlled ecological life support system,“ which was inspired by technologies used in China’s Shenzhou spacecraft. The 1,340-cubic-meter sealed capsule has a floor space of 370 square meters, and is divided into eight compartments, including passenger compartments, resource compartments and greenhouse compartments. The volunteers cultivated about 25 different kinds of plants in the capsule, including wheat, potatoes, sweet potatoes, soybeans, peanuts, lettuce, edible amaranth and