Yearlong Simulation Gives Insights Into Astronaut Life On Mars – Aviation Week

HOUSTONFour volunteers with astronaut-like credentials have concluded the first of NASAs three planned yearlong Earth-based missions on a simulated Martian surface, the agency says.

Each exercise is intended to reveal the challenges and stresses facing those who will live and work on the red planet as well as support staff on Earth as the agency forges ahead with plans for human deep space exploration.

On July 5, NASA administrative personnel opened the door to the Johnson Space Centers Mars Dune Alpha. It is a 1,700-ft.2, 3D-printed habitat with an adjoining 1,200-ft.2 simulated Mars landscape.

Out strolled Kelly Haston, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) commander and biomedical research scientist; Ross Brockwell, the flight engineer and a structural engineer; Nathan Jones, the medical officer and an emergency medicine physician; and Anca Selariu, the science officer and U.S. Navy microbiologist.

Their exercise of 378 Earth days, or one Mars year, consisted of a number of elements. They included the maintenance of their modest habitat, growing and harvesting fresh vegetables to nutritionally supplement their stored food provisions, and spacewalks in their Mars Yard to simulate scientific exploration. The activities also superficially imposed lengthy communications delays of up to 22 min. each way with mission support and research teams back on Earth.

CHAPEA enabled us to collect thousands of data points, yielding a unique and valuable data set in a Mars realistic simulation, declared Grace Douglas, the Mars simulations principal investigator. Douglas spoke as the Mars Dune Alpha crew emerged for a 22-min. ceremony that NASA shared virtually. That data will give us unprecedented insight into how we can best work together to achieve mission objectives, while maintaining health and performance for the success of future human missions to Mars.

NASA currently plans two more CHAPEA Mars mission simulations. The second is set to begin in spring 2025 and the third in 2027. The volunteer application period for the second session closed on April 2. Professionally proficient volunteers must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents ages 30 to 55, nonsmokers, proficient in English and adventuresome.

The 378-day length of the Mars surface missions matches the estimated two- to three-year duration of a roundtrip to Mars using current space propulsion technologies. NASA is working to develop nuclear propulsion to significantly reduce the travel time.

Whether it was Mars walks or robotic operations, habitat maintenance, planned and unplanned, the analogs are really so important to our understanding of what its going to takeour insights into how our assumptions of how our architectures are really going to workwhen the plans meet reality, Julie Kramer White, CHAPEAs director of engineering, told the small gathering.

The Earth-based simulations are intended to lower the risks associated with the complex technologies that will be required to reach and return from Mars, White said. We still have a lot left to learn.

CHAPEA I has been a unique experience with great challenges, joys and sorrows. A lot of hard work, but a fair bit of fun thrown in as well, Haston told the gathering.

Wow. That went by very quickly, said Jones, who was perhaps the most emotional of the CHAPEA crew while joking about the experience. I hope I dont cry standing up here in front of all of you.

Im grateful for the chance to live the idea that we must utilize resources no faster than they can be replenished and produce wastes no faster than they be processed back into resources, added Brockwell. We cannot live, dream, create or explore in any significant time frame if we dont live these principles. But if we do, we can achieve amazing and inspiring things like exploring other worlds. And we can do these things together. We can use our senses of wonder and purpose to achieve peace and prosperity and to unlock knowledge and joy for the benefit of everyone and every part of planet Earth.

Ive been asked many times, Why go to Mars? Selariu said. Because its possible space can unite and bring out the best in us. Because its one defining step that Earthlings will take to light the way into the next centuries.

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Yearlong Simulation Gives Insights Into Astronaut Life On Mars - Aviation Week