By: Jackson Liu

On June 25, 2023, four people started their 378 day stay in a fake Mars shelter located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The mission, which is run by NASA, is called CHAPEA, or Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, and is intended to study the mental and social problems that astronauts might face when traveling to Mars for real. The four volunteers were selected from over 4000 volunteers.

The volunteers will spend the year in an isolated 1700 square foot 3D printed mock mars habitat. Like a real mission the volunteers will perform different tasks throughout the year. The tasks include virtual reality spacewalks, science experiments, and vegetable gardening. “The simulation will allow us to collect cognitive and physical performance data to give us more insight into the potential impacts of long-duration missions to Mars on crew health and performance,” said CHAPEA’s principal investigator, Grace Douglas. The volunteers would also have to endure some unexpected challenges such as equipment failure. If this mission succeeds, then scientists will have much more data about what would happen if people were really put in this kind of environment.