The first CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) crew left their simulated Mars habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and “returned to Earth” on July 6. CHAPEA Mission 1, the first of three simulated missions, was designed to help scientists, engineers and mission planners better understand how life on another planet might affect human health and performance.
Commander Kelly Haston, Flight Engineer Ross Brockwell, Medical Officer Nathan Jones and Science Officer Anca Serariu lived and worked in an isolated, 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat to support human health and performance research in preparation for future Mars missions.
“Congratulations to the CHAPEA 1 crew for completing their year-long stay in a simulated Mars environment,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Through the Artemis missions, we will apply what we’ve learned on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap – sending the first astronauts to Mars. The CHAPEA mission is critical to developing the knowledge and tools humanity will need to one day live and work on the Red Planet.”
The crew will leave their habitat and return to the arms of their families and friends after a 378-day simulated Mars surface mission that began on June 25, 2023.
In this high-fidelity simulation, the crew performed different types of mission objectives, including a mock “Mars walk,” robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercise, and crop cultivation. The crew also faced intentional environmental stressors, including resource limitation, isolation, and confinement in the habitat. Over the next two weeks, volunteers will complete post-mission data collection activities before returning home.
“We planned these final 378 days with an eye toward the many challenges the crew will face on Mars, during which they have dedicated their lives to achieving this unprecedented operational goal,” said Grace Douglas, CHAPEA principal investigator. “We look forward to digging into the data we collected and preparing for CHAPEA Mission 2 and ultimately, a human presence on Mars.”
As NASA seeks to establish a long-term home base for scientific discovery and exploration on the lunar surface through its Artemis program, analog missions like CHAPEA provide scientific data to validate systems and develop technological solutions for future Mars missions.
Two more one-year CHAPEA missions are planned, with the next one scheduled to launch in 2025. Subsequent missions will be largely similar, allowing researchers to collect data from more participants to expand the dataset and provide a broader perspective on how realistic resource limitations, isolation, and confinement on Mars might affect human health and performance.
NASA has several other avenues for gathering research on isolation, including the Human Exploration Research Analogue, Antarctic and other analogues, and human spaceflight missions to the International Space Station, to ensure it can achieve its primary research goal of informing future human missions to the Moon and Mars.
The CHAPEA simulation mission is unique in testing the effects of long-term isolation and confinement on Mars with realistic communication time delays with Earth (up to 44 minutes round trip) and resource limitations associated with Mars, including a more limited food system that can be supported on the space station and other similar environments.
To see the ceremony where the crew leaves the living quarters, here.
NASA Artemis Through this campaign, NASA will establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration on the Moon’s surface; land the first woman, the first person of color, and the first international partner astronaut on the Moon; and set the stage for human exploration to Mars for the benefit of all people.
For more information about CHAPEA, please see below.
