An international crew of six astronauts are training for a caving adventure designed to prepare them for spaceflight. Training started on Sunday and will continue to Friday 7 September, when they enter the Italian caves and spend six days underground.

Follow Andreas Mogensen, David Saint-Jacques, Soichi Noguchi, Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel and Nikolai Tikhonov through regular updates on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will post regular updates on ESA’s astronaut blog.

Photos

CAVES, an abbreviation of Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills, prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively and solve problems as a multicultural team while exploring uncharted areas using space procedures.

Videos

Follow the links to the right for twitter and the astronaut blog.