An aerospace engineer from Banbury was among six volunteers who returned to reality after a "journey to Mars."

The group spent a year in a cramped, inflatable dome in Hawaii, United States, that was intended to stimulate life on Mars for astronauts who may one day venture there.

Among them was Andrzej Stewart, who was born in North Oxfordshire.

He and the other five volunteers were selected from a pool of "astronaut-like" candidates and performed tasks such as geological field work and exercises in self-sufficiency.

They were paid just £12,000 and survived on freeze-dried food, with their electronic communications to the outside world delayed by 20 minutes to replicate how long it would take to communicate between Mars and Earth.

The experiment was funded by Nasa and operated by the University of Hawaii.

Research focused on the behavioural and psychological effects of long-duration isolation.

It is hoped this will allow Nasa to tackle one of the big problems of sending humans deep into space- the ability of astronauts to get along together in a small environment for long periods of time.