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Astronauts are training for future missions to the Moon and Mars in a massive underground cave that mimics the conditions they will face on in space.
The cave, located in Slovenia, contains "a labyrinth of passages mostly unexplored and rich in indigenous species,” according to course director Francesco Sauro.
It is "the closest you can get on this planet to the environmental, psychological and logistics constraints of a space mission,” explains course designer Loredana Bessone.
During the six-day training course, astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and Russian space agency Roscosmos will live and work in the cave.