NASA, reeling from budget cuts to its space program, is planning its next Mars mission and wants help from scientists and engineers around the world to make it a reality, according to recent reports.

Russian space agency Roscosmos announced on Tuesday the initial results of an investigation into its failed Mars mission, blaming cosmic radiation for a computer glitch that ultimately doomed the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft.

As the only U.S. organization participating in the simulation, NSBRI monitored the Mars500 crew's rest-activity patterns, performance and psychological responses to determine the extent to which sleep loss, fatigue, stress, mood changes and conflicts occurred during the mission.

About eight months before the NASA rover Curiosity touches down on Mars in August 2012, the mission's science measurements will begin much closer to Earth.

HOUSTON, June 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ever wondered what it would be like to go on a mission to Mars? On June 3, a six-man international crew entered an isolation chamber in Moscow for a simulated 520-day Mars mission conducted by the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation - Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.