Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said the results of the trial run were "very promising," and he told reporters the operation was on track to begin hoisting the men back to safety in the earliest hours of Wednesday morning.
Finally, more than two months after a mine shaft collapsed around them and triggered the longest mining rescue ever, the men trapped in a remote Chilean gold mine are about to see daylight.
Engineers finished lining the inside of the rescue shaft with steel early this morning, but as the final countdown to rescue begins, tensions are running high.
Officials are taking every precaution imaginable for the last, most dangerous steps of the rescue. Families are preparing to see their loved ones again. And the site above the gold and copper mine is frenetic with anticipation.
"Well, the operation should start during Wednesday," Golborne told reporters, according to media reports. "That's what we are expecting now, and the whole process should take something in the range of 48 hours -- I mean two days -- from the first rescue to the last rescue."
That process, though, is complicated. Miners will make the winding, 15-minute trip to the surface in the Phoenix, a thin steel tube so small that the medical team is worried that some of the men may become claustrophobic and panic. To help avoid any medical emergencies, the men will wear oxygen masks, and their heartbeats will be monitored from above.
"It will be frightening. This is a dangerous mission, and anything can happen," Chilean Minister of Health Jaime Manalich told reporters. "It will be hard. The hole is small, and rocks will fall on them."
Family members were allowed to try out the Phoenix for size. Noeni Donoso Campos, the mother-in-law of miner Samuel Avalos, was satisfied.
"It felt really safe, because there was a camera. I had plenty of space to move around. There was a heart monitor, and they are listening to them," she told SKY News. "I am certain he'll be OK. I am an older lady and I was fine, so I am sure he will manage."
But before the miners can be lifted from their galley thousands of feet below the Atacama Desert, a medical expert will travel there to examine them in person and make a final decision about which men should travel to the surface first. The men, however, have their own ideas. Manalich said they were in great spirits, and each wanted to be the last man out of the mine.
"They were fighting with us yesterday because everyone wanted to be at the end of the line, not the beginning," Manalich told reporters, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"I spoke to them to tell them that we needed to establish an order of evacuation, and that the order would be decided together with them and with the technical team, and what was their reaction? 'Yes, minister, that's all fine and well, but I want to leave last.' And then another one shows up and says, 'No, comrade, I had said that I would go last,'" Manalich told reporters at a news conference Sunday. "I tell this story to show what a complete and admirable spirit of solidarity they have kept."
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The men, by all accounts, are excited, and they spoke to family members Sunday for the last time before their rescue to make plans for life after their ordeal. Antonia Villarroel, the mother of miner Richard Villarroel, whose wife is expected to give birth to their first child any day, told the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio that her son will not return to the mines and plans on opening a bakery instead.But serious risks for the men remain. During their ascent, the miners will don $400 sunglasses to shield their eyes from the desert sun after months underground. And when they finally emerge from the mine, the men will be examined by a team of doctors before they are reunited with their families. Only then will the waiting hordes of journalists be given access to the men, who have pledged to profit off their remarkable story as a group.
Some of the miners, though, may have their own drama to attend to. Marta Salinas, the wife of trapped miner Yonni Barrios, met her husband's lover at a vigil above the mine. She said she will be leaving Barrios after he is rescued. "When he gets out, I'll pack his bag and chuck him out," she told London's Mirror.