Three Chinese volunteers ended a 105-day stint yesterday in which they lived inside a miniature Earth and relied only on lab-grown plants and insects for sustenance.

The experiment was carried out inside a 500-cubic-meter enclosed capsule titled Moon Palace 1 and is China's first, and the world's third, bioregenerative life support base.

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Volunteers Xie Beizhen, Dong Chen and Wang Minjuan reportedly fed themselves by cultivating grains, fruits, and vegetables and also eating insects grown inside the module which is located in a closed lab at Beihang University in Beijing.

The module is meant to represent a miniature version of Earth's biosphere and features a system which produces water and fertilizer, processes waste, and also recycles air. Waste produced by volunteers was in effect processed and recycled to be used as fertilizer for the vegetation.

Moon Palace 1 contained not only labs for growing plants but also a separate cabin area where the volunteers could live, socialize, and spend time breeding insects for food in a special room located within the living space.

Within the capsule the research volunteers cultivated five grains, 15 types of vegetables, one kind of fruit, as well as a yellow mealworm which provided them with protein.

According to statements released by officials, all facilities and techniques used for Moon Palace 1 are domestically developed and the experimental capsule is reported to be one of the world's most advanced systems of its kind.

Researchers hope that the experiment will offer information which will make it possible for astronauts to live safely in space for longer periods of time without delivery of supplies.

The Moon Palace 1 experiment and others like it are fostering China's ambitious plan to set up a permanent station in space as well as hopes that soon the nation can also launch a manned lunar probe.