A crew of four research volunteers stepped inside NASA\u2019s CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) habitat on Oct. 19, marking the start of the agency\u2019s second 378-day simulated Mars mission.<\/p>\n
Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer are living and working inside the roughly 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat at the agency\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston until Oct. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe information and lessons learned through CHAPEA will inform real-life mission planning, vehicle and surface habitat designs, and other resources NASA needs to support crew health and performance as we venture beyond low-Earth orbit,\u201d said Sara Whiting, Human Research Program project scientist. \u201cThrough these lessons, NASA\u2019s Human Research Program is reducing human health and performance risks of spaceflight to enable safe and successful crewed missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crew will face the challenges of a real Mars mission, and only leave to perform simulated \u201cMarswalk\u201d activities directly outside the habitat, wearing spacesuits, to traverse a simulated Mars environment filled with red sand. During these Marswalks, they will remain isolated within the building that houses CHAPEA at NASA Johnson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese crewmembers will help provide foundational data for mission planning and vehicle design and inform trades between resources, methods, and technologies that best support health and performance within the constraints of living on Mars,\u201d said Grace Douglas, CHAPEA principal investigator. \u201cThe information gained from these simulated missions is critical to NASA\u2019s goal of sending astronauts to explore Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the year ahead, the crew will complete a variety of activities designed to replicate life and work on a long-duration mission on Mars, including high-tempo simulated Marswalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, physical exercise, and crop cultivation. The mission also aims to investigate how the crew adapts and responds to various environmental stressors that may arise during a real Martian mission, including limited access to resources, prolonged isolation, 22-minute communication delays, and equipment failures. Researchers will study how the team manages these conditions, which will inform future protocols and plans ahead of future crewed missions to Mars.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0first CHAPEA mission<\/a>, which took place in the same habitat, concluded on July 6, 2024.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Human Research Program<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s\u00a0Human Research Program<\/a>\u00a0pursues methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, commercial missions, the International Space Station and Artemis missions, the program scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research drives the program\u2019s\u00a0quest<\/a>\u00a0to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy and mission ready as human space exploration expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A crew of four research volunteers stepped inside NASA\u2019s CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) habitat on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[93125,11759,10094,85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-153359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-crew-health-and-performance-exploration-analog-chapea","9":"tag-human-research-program","10":"tag-humans-in-space","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}