The device consists of a major living space and two plant greenhouses.” The major cabin covers 42 square meters the size of a very small urban apartment while each of the plant cabins is 3.5 meters high and 50 to 60 square meters in area. The major cabin hosts four bed cubicles, a common room, a washroom, a waste-treatment room and an animal-raising room. Eight Chinese volunteers will live in “Yuegong-1,” a simulated space “cabin for the next year, all civilians and elite postgraduate students from Beihang University. The first four two men and two women, will stay in the cabin for 60 days, then be replaced by the second group, also two men and two women, who will stay there for 200 days. After that, the first group will return for the remaining 105 days. The purpose of the new program is to test the stability of the BLSS when astronauts with different metabolic rates take turns to live in the cabin and when they face sudden situations such as blackouts.”
CAS news release, May 11, 2017