World in brief: Crew begins ‘journey’ to Mars

MOSCOW – An international team of researchers climbed into a set of windowless steel capsules Thursday to launch a 520-day simulation of a flight to Mars intended to help real space crews of the future cope with confinement, stress and fatigue of interplanetary travel.

The six-member, all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese will follow a tight regimen of experiments and exercise under video surveillance.

The Mars-500 experiment – conducted by the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems in cooperation with the European Space Agency and China’s space training center – aims to reproduce the conditions of space travel, with exception of weightlessness.

The researchers will communicate with the outside world via the Internet – delayed and occasionally disrupted to imitate the effects of space travel. Crew members will have two days off a week, except when emergencies are simulated, though they will still be in the capsules.

Amateur reports strike on Jupiter

LOS ANGELES – Jupiter has gotten whacked again.

An amateur astronomer in Australia peering at the giant gas planet Thursday reported witnessing a bright flash from an object hitting Jupiter and apparently burning up in the atmosphere.

“When I saw the flash, I couldn’t believe it,” said amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley. “The fireball lasted about 2 seconds and was very bright.”

Wesley, a computer programmer with a good reputation among professional astronomers, alerted the cosmic collision to professional and amateur sky-gazers. The discovery was later confirmed by another amateur astronomer in the Philippines.

Wesley gained fame last year when he spotted a scar the size of the Pacific Ocean near Jupiter’s south pole believed to have been caused by an asteroid smacking into the planet. Using an infrared telescope on Hawaii, NASA scientists found evidence that Jupiter was apparently struck near its south pole, and credited Wesley.