Human flight to Mars experiment

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 Six volunteer astronauts from Russia, France and Germany will take part in an experiment to see if human beings would be able to withstand the two-year journey to Mars and back.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7969169.stm

All very worthwhile, I'm sure much will be learnt, but it doesn't and couldn't address the issue of the human body’s response to weightlessness. Although extended astronaut/cosmonaut stays in a weightless environment have gone some way toward that.

Also Robert Zubrin did a Mars analogue simulation; he could still be conducting that experiment. I'm not sure, so this experiment is not new.

Mars is an important milestone in our quest to become a space faring species. The Earth's resources are limited. 

Thinking many centuries ahead, the concept of terraforming Mars often makes me consider the not insignificant issue of the lack of a magnetic field.

Mars lost its magnetic field a longtime ago; the iron core is now solid rather than a molten dynamo. Precisely why the atmosphere the planet enjoyed in the past has now been lost, a victim of the solar wind, gradually eroding the tenuous layer of gas until none was left.

The notion of terraforming mars is all well and good, but without a magnetic field any atmosphere would eventually be lost to space.