The inaugural CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) crew is “back on Earth” after leaving their simulated Martian habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on July 6. The first of three simulated missions, CHAPEA Mission 1, was designed to help scientists, engineers and mission planners better understand how living on another world can affect human health and performance.
Kelly Haston, Commander, Ross Brockwell, Flight Engineer, Nathan Jones, Medical Officer, and Anca Selariu, Science Officer, lived and worked in a remote, 1,700-square-foot (157-square-meter) 3D-printed habitat to support research into human health and performance in preparation for future missions to Mars.
“Congratulations to the crew of CHAPEA Mission 1 for completing a year in a Mars-simulated environment,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Through the Artemis missions, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next big step: sending the first astronauts to Mars. The CHAPEA missions are critical to developing the knowledge and tools people will need to one day live and work on the Red Planet.”
The crew left the habitat and returned to the arms of family and friends after a 378-day simulated mission to the surface of Mars that began on June 25, 2023.
This high-fidelity simulation involved the crew performing a variety of mission objectives, including simulated “marswalks,” robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercises, and crop growth. The crew also encountered intentional environmental stressors in their habitat, such as limited resources, isolation, and confinement. Over the next two weeks, the volunteers will complete post-mission data collection activities before returning home.
“We’ve planned the last 378 days with many of the challenges that crews on Mars can face, and this crew has dedicated their lives during that time to achieving these unprecedented operational objectives,” said CHAPEA Principal Investigator Grace Douglas. “I look forward to diving into the data we’ve collected, in preparation for CHAPEA Mission 2 and ultimately a human presence on Mars.”
While NASA works to establish a long-term presence for scientific discovery and exploration on the Moon through the Artemis campaign, analog missions such as CHAPEA provide scientific data to validate systems and develop technology solutions for future missions to Mars.
Two additional one-year CHAPEA missions are planned, with the next expected to launch in 2025. Subsequent missions will be nearly identical, allowing researchers to collect data from more participants to expand the dataset and provide a broader perspective on the impact of realistic Martian resource constraints, isolation and confinement on human health and performance.
NASA has several other opportunities to collect isolation research, including the Human Exploration Research Analog, Antarctica and other analogs, as well as manned space missions to the International Space Station to ensure that key research objectives can be completed in support of future manned missions to the Moon and Mars.
The simulated CHAPEA missions are unique in that they test the impact of prolonged isolation and confinement with the addition of Mars-realistic time delays of communications with Earth – up to 44 minutes round trip – along with the resource constraints relevant to Mars, including a more limited food system that can be supported on the space station and other analogues.
Want to watch the ceremony where the crew leaves their habitat? Click here.
Through NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will lay the foundation for long-term scientific exploration on the moon, land the first woman, the first person of color, and the first international astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all.
For more information about CHAPEA, please visit:
www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/