Chinese students to live 200 days in sealed space module with nothing going in and nothing coming out – USA TODAY

If you have ever wondered what life on a different planet might be like, it might look a little like this. Susana Victoria Perez (@susana_vp) has more. Buzz60

Student volunteers wave from inside the Lunar Palace 1, a laboratory simulating a lunar-like environment, in Beijing.(Photo: STR, AFP/Getty Images)

They tried it with animals; now its time to try it with humans.

Yes, a group of human guinea pigs actually, four Chinese university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a self-sustaining space station on another planet.

They are part of a project aimed at creating an ecosystem that provides everything humans need to survive, Reuters reported.

The students, from Beihang University, previously known as the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, entered the Lunar Palace-1 module on Sunday with the aim of living self-sufficiently for 200 days.

The module containsfour bed cubicles, a common room, a washroom, a waste-treatment room and an animal-raising room, according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily newspaper.

"I'll get so much out of this," Liu Guanghui, a Ph.D student, who entered the 1,700-square-foot temporary residence on Sunday, told Reuters. "It's truly a different life experience."

Human waste will be treated through a bio-fermentation process, Xinhua reported,and vegetables and other crops will be grown with the help of food and waste byproducts.

The experiment comes as China seeks to become a global power in space exploration, with plans to send the first probe to the dark side of the moon by 2018 and to put astronauts on the moon by 2036, Reuters reported.

Liu Hong, a professor at at the university who is leading the project,said everything needed for human survival had been carefully calculated.

Four student volunteers take an oath before entering the Lunar Palace 1, a laboratory simulating a lunar-like environment.(Photo: STR, AFP/Getty Images)

"We've designed it so the oxygen (produced by plants at the station) is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animals and the organisms that break down the waste materials," she told Reuters.

The project also is a test of the psychological impact on humans of a long stay on another planet.

"They can become a bit depressed," Liu told the agency. "If you spend a long time in this type of environment it can create some psychological problems."

The project's support team has found mapping out a specific set of daily tasks for the students is one way that helps them to remain happy, Reuters reported.

"We did this experiment with animals, ... so we want to see how much impact it will have on people," Liusaid.

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Chinese students to live 200 days in sealed space module with nothing going in and nothing coming out - USA TODAY