The crew of NASA’s Mars mission has emerged from its craft after a year-long journey that never left Earth.
Four volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months in NASA’s first simulated environment on Mars at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and exited the artificial alien environment Saturday around 5 p.m.
Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones entered the 3D-printed habitat on June 25, 2023 as the space agency’s first crew. Analog examination of crew health and performance project.
Haston, the mission commander, began with a simple, “Hello.”
“It’s actually so amazing to be able to say ‘hi’ to all of you,” she said.
Jones, a physician and mission physician, said their 378 days in prison “went by quickly.”
The foursome lived and worked in a 17,000-square-foot (1,579-square-meter) space to simulate a mission to the red planet, the fourth from the sun and a frequent focus of discussion among scientists and science fiction fans about a possible route. people outside our moon.
CHAPEA’s first crew focused on creating possible conditions for future operations on Mars through simulated spacewalks, called “Marswalks”, as well as growing and harvesting vegetables to resupply and maintain the habitat and its equipment.
They also worked their way through challenges that a real Mars crew would expect, including limited resources, isolation and communication delays with their home planet on the other side of the habitat’s walls of up to 22 minutes, NASA said.
Two more CHAPEA missions are planned, and the crews will continue to conduct simulated spacewalks and collect data on factors related to physical and behavioral health and performance, NASA said.
Steve Koerner, Johnson Space Center deputy director, said most of the first crew’s experiments focused on nutrition and how it affected their performance. The work was “essential science as we prepare to send humans to the Red Planet,” he said.
“They were separated from their families, put on a carefully prescribed diet and subjected to a lot of observation,” Koerner said.
“Our goal is Mars,” he said, calling the project an important step in America’s bid to become a leader in global space exploration efforts.
The four volunteers who showed up after Kjell Lindgren, astronaut and deputy director of flight operations, knocked on the station’s door, spoke of the gratitude they had for each other and those who waited patiently outside, as well as the lessons learned about being a future pilot. missions to Mars and life on Earth.
Brockwell, the crew’s flight engineer, said the mission showed him the importance of living sustainably for the benefit of everyone on Earth.
“I am very grateful to have had this incredible opportunity to live a year of planetary adventure towards an exciting future, and I am grateful for the opportunity to live the idea that we must use resources faster than they can. be replenished and produce waste faster than it can be processed back into resources,” Brockwell said.
“We cannot live, dream, create or explore in any significant time frame unless we live by these principles, but if we do, we can achieve and sustain amazing and inspiring things like exploring other worlds,” he said.
Science officer Anca Selariu said she has been asked many times why Mars is fixed.
“Why go to Mars? Because it is possible,” she said. “Because the universe can unite and bring out the best in us. Because it is one defining step that the ‘Earthlings’ will take to light the way into the next centuries.”