Overview
- Four volunteers—Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer—entered the CHAPEA habitat on Oct. 19, 2025, for a 378-day stay scheduled to end Oct. 31, 2026.
- The crew is living inside a roughly 1,700-square-foot 3D-printed habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
- Operations include high-tempo simulated Marswalks outside the habitat in spacesuits, robotic work, habitat maintenance, structured exercise, and crop cultivation.
- Researchers are studying responses to limited resources, prolonged isolation, 22-minute one-way communications delays, and equipment failure scenarios.
- NASA says findings will inform mission planning as well as vehicle and surface habitat designs for Artemis missions and future crewed exploration of Mars.