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Voyagers of Mars: The First CHAPEA Crew’s Yearlong Journey 

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When the first humans travel to the Red Planet, they will need to know how to repair and maintain equipment, grow their own food, and stay healthy, all while contending with Earth-to-Mars communication delays. They must also find ways to build comradery and have fun. 

The first all-volunteer CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) crew accomplished all of that and more during their 378-day analog mission on the surface of Mars.  

Living in the isolated Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat, crew members Kelly Haston, Ross Brockwell, Nathan Jones, and Anca Selariu faced the rigors of a simulated Mars expedition, enduring stressors akin to those of a real mission to the Red Planet. They also celebrated holidays and birthdays, gave each other haircuts, and found moments of levity in isolation. Their journey will help scientists understand the challenges of deep space missions and offer invaluable insights into the resilience of the human spirit. 

A woman in a black NASA jumpsuit is shaking hands with a man in a blue NASA astronaut suit. Another man in a blue suit is clapping. They are standing at the entrance of a building with NASA logos and other mission patches on the wall.
NASA’s CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) crew member Kelly Haston greets Deputy Director of Flight Operations Kjell Lindgren and Johnson Space Center Deputy Director Stephen Koerner at the habitat’s door.
NASA/Josh Valcarcel

As the crew concluded their journey on July 6, NASA astronaut and Deputy Director of Flight Operations Kjell Lindgren opened the habitat door and welcomed them home. 

“The crew and their families have committed a year of their lives in service to NASA, the country, and humanity’s exploration of space. Thank you to for committing yourselves to research that will enable our future exploration of space,” he said. “Your fingerprints are going to be an indelible part of those first footprints on Mars.” 

The CHAPEA crew brought their diverse backgrounds and experiences to the mission, collaborating with NASA’s scientists and engineers to collect data that will provide insight into maintaining crew health and performance for future missions to Mars. 

Four people in black NASA jumpsuits are standing in front of a building with NASA logos and mission patches on the wall. They are smiling and holding mission patches, posing for a group photo.
PHOTO DATE: July 06, 2024 LOCATION: Bldg. 220 – CHAPEA Habitat SUBJECT: ASA Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) Mars Analog Mission 1 Egress Event with crew Anca Selariu, Nathan Jones, Kelly Haston, Ross Brockwell. PHOTOGRAPHER: NASA/Josh Valcarcel
NASA/Josh Valcarcel

Kelly Haston: Mission Commander and Pioneering Scientist 

Haston, the mission commander, is a research scientist who builds human disease models. She has spearheaded innovative stem cell-based projects, deriving multiple cell types for work in infertility, liver disease, and neurodegeneration. Her role was pivotal in maintaining crew morale and ensuring the success of daily operations. 

She highlighted the importance of teamwork and adaptability in a mission with such high stakes.

“We had to rely on each other and our training to navigate the challenges we faced,” she said. “Every day brought new obstacles, but also new opportunities for growth and learning.” 

Nathan Jones: Medical Officer and Expert Communicator 

Jones, the crew medical officer, used his emergency and international medicine experience to tackle the unique challenges of the Mars mission. His expertise in problem-solving and effective communication in a time-sensitive and resource-limited environment was essential due to the approximately one-hour transmission delay. “Even something as simple as when to communicate is important,” said Jones. The crew had to consider what observations were essential to report to each other or Mission Control to avoid overburdening the team or unnecessarily using the limited bandwidth to Earth. 

“Everything we do in CHAPEA is touched by the heroes working on the ground at NASA,” he said. “We couldn’t ask for a better experience or better people to work with.” 

The experience evolved into a journey of personal growth for Jones. “I am constantly looking forward, planning for the future,” he said. “I learned to take time to enjoy the current season and be patient for the coming ones.” 

He also discovered a new hobby: art. “I have even surprised myself with how well some of my sketches have turned out,” he said. 

Anca Selariu: Microbiologist and Innovative Thinker 

Anca Selariu brought expertise as a microbiologist in the U.S. Navy, with a background in viral vaccine discovery, prion transmission, gene therapy development, and infectious disease research management. 

Selariu expressed that she owes much to the Navy, including her involvement in CHAPEA, as it helped shape her both personally and professionally. “I hope to bring back a fresh perspective, along with a strong inclination to think differently about a problem, and test which questions are worth asking before we set out answering them,” she said.  

Reflecting on the mission, Selariu said, “Every day seemed to be a new revelation about something; about Earth, about art, about humans, about cultures, about the history of life in the universe – what little we know of it.” 

She added, “As much as I appreciate having information at my fingertips, I will miss the luxury of being unplugged in a world that now validates humans by their digital presence.”  

Ross Brockwell: Structural Engineer and Problem Solver 

Brockwell, the mission’s flight engineer, focused on infrastructure, building design, and organizational leadership. His structural engineering background influenced his approach to problem solving in the CHAPEA habitat. 

“An engineering perspective leads you to build an understanding of how things will react and interact, anticipate possible failure points, and ensure redundancy and contingency planning,” he said. 

That mindset helped the crew develop creative solutions to mission challenges, such as using a 3D printer to design part adapters and tools and find ways to connect as a team. “Several things we wanted to do for fun required innovation, one being developing a bracket so we could safely and securely mount our mini-basketball hoop,” he said. 

He advises Artemis Generation members interested in contributing to future analog missions to think about systems engineering theory and learn to develop and integrate whole systems while solving individual challenges.  

Brockwell believes the most important attributes for a CHAPEA crew member are imagination and a strong sense of wonder. “Of course, one needs to have patience, self-control, emotional regulation, and a sense of humor,” he said. “I would also add perspective, which means understanding the importance of exploration missions on behalf of humankind and appreciating being part of something greater than oneself.” 

Four people wearing black NASA jumpsuits are standing in front of a white van with a CHAPEA mission logo. The individuals are wearing sunglasses and caps, and the background shows industrial equipment and power lines.
The CHAPEA crew is “back on Earth” after their 378-day mission inside the simulated Martian habitat.
NASA /Josh Valcarcel

A Vision for the Future 

As the first CHAPEA mission concludes, the data collected and experiences shared by the crew will pave the way for future explorations, bringing humanity one step closer to setting foot on Mars.  

“One of the biggest things I have learned on this long-duration mission is that we should never underestimate the effects of small gains over time,” said Jones. “Be willing to do the hard things now and it may make all the difference for the future.” 

Selariu emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in upcoming space missions. “What everyone at CHAPEA seems to have in common is passion for space and drive to pursue it no matter the challenges, inconvenience, and personal sacrifices.” 

Brockwell looks forward to missions to the Red Planet becoming a reality. “It still fills me with awe and excitement to think that one day there will be people on the surface of other worlds, overcoming immense challenges and expanding the existence and awareness of life from Earth.” 

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      A key element of that investigation will be thermal imaging — global scans of Europa that map temperatures to shed light on how active the surface is. Infrared imaging will reveal how much heat is being emitted from the moon; warmer areas of the ice give off more energy and indicate recent activity.
      The imaging also will tell scientists where the ocean is closest to the surface. Europa is crisscrossed by dramatic ridges and fractures, which scientists believe are caused by ocean convection pulling apart the icy crust and water rising up to fill the gaps.
      This picture of Mars is a colorized composite of several images captured by Europa Clipper’s thermal imager. Warm colors represent relatively warm temperatures; red areas are about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius), and purple regions are about minus 190 F (minus 125 C).NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU “We want to measure the temperature of those features,” said Arizona State University’s Phil Christensen, principal investigator of Europa Clipper’s infrared camera, called the Europa Thermal Imaging System (E-THEMIS). “If Europa is a really active place, those fractures will be warmer than the surrounding ice where the ocean comes close to the surface. Or if water erupted onto the surface hundreds to thousands of years ago, then those surfaces could still be relatively warm.”
      Why Mars
      On March 1, Europa Clipper flew just 550 miles (884 kilometers) above the surface of Mars in order to use the planet’s gravitational pull to reshape the spacecraft’s trajectory. Ultimately, the assist will get the mission to Jupiter faster than if it made a beeline for the gas giant, but the flyby also offered a critical opportunity for Europa Clipper to test E-THEMIS.
      For about 18 minutes on March 1, the instrument captured one image per second, yielding more than a thousand grayscale pictures that were transmitted to Earth starting on May 5. After compiling these images into a global snapshot of Mars, scientists applied color, using hues with familiar associations: Warm areas are depicted in red, while colder areas are shown as blue.
      By comparing E-THEMIS images with those made from established Mars data, scientists can judge how well the instrument is working.
      “We wanted no surprises in these new images,” Christensen said. “The goal was to capture imagery of a planetary body we know extraordinarily well and make sure the dataset looks exactly the way it should, based on 20 years of instruments documenting Mars.”
      NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, launched in 2001, carries a sister instrument named THEMIS that has been capturing its own thermal images of the Red Planet for decades. To be extra thorough, the Odyssey team collected thermal images of Mars before, during, and after Europa Clipper’s flyby so that Europa scientists can compare the visuals as an additional gauge of how well E-THEMIS is calibrated.
      Europa Clipper also took advantage of the close proximity to Mars to test all the components of its radar instrument in unison for the first time. The radar antennas and the wavelengths they produce are so long that it wasn’t possible for engineers to can do that in a clean room before launch. The radar data will be returned and analyzed in the coming weeks and months, but preliminary assessments of the real-time telemetry indicate that the test went well.
      To leverage the flyby even further, the science team took the opportunity to ensure that the spacecraft’s telecommunication equipment will be able to conduct gravity experiments at Europa. By transmitting signals to Earth while passing through Mars’ gravity field, they were able to confirm that a similar operation is expected to work at Europa.
      Europa Clipper launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 14, 2024, via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, embarking on a 1.8 billion-mile (2.9 billion-kilometer) journey to Jupiter, which is five times farther from the Sun than Earth is. Now that the probe has harnessed the gravity of Mars, its next gravity assist will be from Earth in 2026.
      More About Europa Clipper
      Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
      Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, managed the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
      Find more information about Europa Clipper here:
      News Media Contacts
      Gretchen McCartney
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      818-287-4115
      gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov 
      Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
      NASA Headquarters, Washington
      202-358-1600
      karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov  
      2025-065
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      Last Updated May 12, 2025 Related Terms
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