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By NASA
A view inside the sandbox portion of the Crew Health and Performance Analog, where research volunteers participate in simulated walks on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA Four research volunteers will soon participate in NASA’s year-long simulation of a Mars mission inside a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. This mission will provide NASA with foundational data to inform human exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer enter into the 1,700-square-foot Mars Dune Alpha habitat on Sunday, Oct. 19, to begin their mission. The team will live and work like astronauts for 378 days, concluding their mission on Oct. 31, 2026. Emily Phillips and Laura Marie serve as the mission’s alternate crew members.
Through a series of Earth-based missions called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), carried out in the 3D-printed habitat, NASA aims to evaluate certain human health and performance factors ahead of future Mars missions. The crew will undergo realistic resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, isolation and confinement, and other stressors, along with simulated high-tempo extravehicular activities. These scenarios allow NASA to make informed trades between risks and interventions for long-duration exploration missions.
“As NASA gears up for crewed Artemis missions, CHAPEA and other ground analogs are helping to determine which capabilities could best support future crews in overcoming the human health and performance challenges of living and operating beyond Earth’s resources – all before we send humans to Mars,” said Sara Whiting, project scientist with NASA’s Human Research Program at NASA Johnson.
Crew members will carry out scientific research and operational tasks, including simulated Mars walks, growing a vegetable garden, robotic operations, and more. Technologies specifically designed for Mars and deep space exploration will also be tested, including a potable water dispenser and diagnostic medical equipment.
“The simulation will allow us to collect cognitive and physical performance data to give us more insight into the potential impacts of the resource restrictions and long-duration missions to Mars on crew health and performance,” said Grace Douglas, CHAPEA principal investigator. “Ultimately, this information will help NASA make informed decisions to design and plan for a successful human mission to Mars.”
This mission, facilitated by NASA’s Human Research Program, is the second one-year Mars surface simulation conducted through CHAPEA. The first mission concluded on July 6, 2024.
The Human Research Program pursues methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through applied research conducted in laboratories, simulations, and aboard the International Space Station, the program investigates the effects spaceflight has on human bodies and behaviors to keep astronauts healthy and mission-ready.
Primary Crew
Ross Elder, Commander
Ross Elder, from Williamstown, West Virginia, is a major and experimental test pilot in the United States Air Force. At the time of his selection, he served as the director of operations of the 461st Flight Test Squadron. He has piloted over 35 military aircraft and accumulated more than 1,800 flying hours, including 200 combat hours, primarily in the F-35, F-15E/EX, F-16, and A-10C. His flight test experience focuses on envelope expansion, crewed-uncrewed teaming, artificial intelligence, autonomy, mission systems, and weapons modernization.
Elder earned a Bachelor of Science in astronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and commissioned as an Air Force officer upon graduation. He earned a Master of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs and a master’s degree in flight test engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Ellen Ellis, Medical Officer
Ellen Ellis, from North Kingstown, Rhode Island, is a colonel and an acquisitions officer in the United States Space Force. She currently serves as a senior materiel leader in the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Communications Systems Directorate. She is responsible for fielding commercial cloud and traditional information technology hosting solutions and building modernized data centers for the NRO. She previously served as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile operations officer and GPS satellite engineer, and she also developed geospatial intelligence payloads and ground processing systems.
She earned a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering at Syracuse University in New York and holds four master’s degrees, including a Master of Science in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in California, and a Master of Science in emergency and disaster management from Georgetown University in Washington.
Matthew Montgomery, Science Officer
Matthew Montgomery, from Los Angeles, is a hardware engineering design consultant who works with technology startup companies to develop, commercialize, and scale their products. His focus areas include LED lighting, robotics, controlled environment agriculture, and embedded control systems.
Montgomery earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Central Florida. He is also a founder and co-owner of Floating Lava Studios, a film production company based in Los Angeles.
James Spicer, Flight Engineer
James Spicer is a technical director in the aerospace and defense industry. His experience includes building radio and optical satellite communications networks; space data relay networks for human spaceflight; position, navigation, and timing research; and hands-on spacecraft design, integration, and tests.
Spicer earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in aeronautics and astronautics, and holds a Notation in Science Communication from Stanford University in California. He also holds commercial pilot and glider pilot licenses.
Alternate Crew
Emily Phillips
Emily Phillips, from Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, is a captain and pilot in the United States Marine Corps. She currently serves as a forward air controller and air officer attached to an infantry battalion stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California.
Phillips earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and commissioned as a Marine Corps officer upon graduation. She attended flight school, earning her Naval Aviator wings and qualifying as an F/A-18C Hornet pilot. Phillips has completed multiple deployments to Europe and Southeast Asia.
Laura Marie
Born in the United Kingdom, Laura Marie immigrated to the U.S. in 2016. She is a commercial airline pilot specializing in flight safety, currently operating passenger flights in Washington.
Marie began her aviation career in 2019 and has amassed over 2,800 flight hours. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and a Master of Science in aeronautics from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. In addition to her Airline Transport Pilot License, she also possesses flight instructor and advanced ground instructor licenses. Outside the flight deck, Marie dedicates her time to mentoring and supporting aspiring pilots as they navigate their careers.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Dwarf planet Ceres is shown in these enhanced-color renderings that use images from NASA’s Dawn mission. New thermal and chemicals models that rely on the mission’s data indicate Ceres may have long ago had conditions suitable for life.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past.
New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial metabolisms. Although there is no evidence that microorganisms ever existed on Ceres, the finding supports theories that this intriguing dwarf planet, which is the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may have once had conditions suitable to support single-celled lifeforms.
Science data from NASA’s Dawn mission, which ended in 2018, previously showed that the bright, reflective regions on Ceres’ surface are mostly made of salts left over from liquid that percolated up from underground. Later analysis in 2020 found that the source of this liquid was an enormous reservoir of brine, or salty water, below the surface. In other research, the Dawn mission also revealed evidence that Ceres has organic material in the form of carbon molecules — essential, though not sufficient on its own, to support microbial cells.
The presence of water and carbon molecules are two critical pieces of the habitability puzzle on Ceres. The new findings offer the third: a long-lasting source of chemical energy in Ceres’ ancient past that could have made it possible for microorganisms to survive. This result does not mean that Ceres had life, but rather, that there likely was “food” available should life have ever arisen on Ceres.
This illustration depicts the interior of dwarf planet Ceres, including the transfer of water and gases from the rocky core to a reservoir of salty water. Carbon dioxide and methane are among the molecules carrying chemical energy beneath Ceres’ surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech In the study, published in Science Advances on Aug. 20, the authors built thermal and chemical models mimicking the temperature and composition of Ceres’ interior over time. They found that 2.5 billion years or so ago, Ceres’ subsurface ocean may have had a steady supply of hot water containing dissolved gases traveling up from metamorphosed rocks in the rocky core. The heat came from the decay of radioactive elements within the dwarf planet’s rocky interior that occurred when Ceres was young — an internal process thought to be common in our solar system.
“On Earth, when hot water from deep underground mixes with the ocean, the result is often a buffet for microbes — a feast of chemical energy. So it could have big implications if we could determine whether Ceres’ ocean had an influx of hydrothermal fluid in the past,” said Sam Courville, lead author of the study. Now based at Arizona State University in Tempe, he led the research while working as an intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which also managed the Dawn mission.
Catching Chill
The Ceres we know today is unlikely to be habitable. It is cooler, with more ice and less water than in the past. There is currently insufficient heat from radioactive decay within Ceres to keep the water from freezing, and what liquid remains has become a concentrated brine.
The period when Ceres would most likely have been habitable was between a half-billion and 2 billion years after it formed (or about 2.5 billion to 4 billion years ago), when its rocky core reached its peak temperature. That’s when warm fluids would have been introduced into Ceres’ underground water.
The dwarf planet also doesn’t have the benefit of present-day internal heating generated by the push and pull of orbiting a large planet, like Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa do. So Ceres’ greatest potential for habitability-fueling energy was in the past.
This result has implications for water-rich objects throughout the outer solar system, too. Many of the other icy moons and dwarf planets that are of similar size to Ceres (about 585 miles, or 940 kilometers, in diameter) and don’t have significant internal heating from the gravitational pull of planets could have also had a period of habitability in their past.
More About Dawn
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL managed Dawn’s mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn was a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. JPL was responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Northrop Grumman in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute were international partners on the mission team.
For a complete list of mission participants, visit:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/overview/
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
2025-108
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Last Updated Aug 20, 2025 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Data from ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission can be used to estimate how much carbon is stored in forests – and a study has improved our understanding of how reliable this proxy is and how long-term datasets from SMOS can help us to monitor this valuable resource.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Researchers look at a bend that occurred in the 94-foot triangular, rollable and collapsible boom during an off-axis compression test.NASA/David C. Bowman Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have developed a technique to test long, flexible, composite booms for use in space in such a way that gravity helps, rather than hinders, the process. During a recent test campaign inside a 100-foot tower at a NASA Langley lab, researchers suspended a 94-foot triangular, rollable, and collapsible boom manufactured by Florida-based aerospace company, Redwire, and applied different forces to the boom to see how it would respond.
Having a facility tall enough to accommodate vertical testing is advantageous because horizontal tests require extra equipment to keep gravity from bending the long booms, but this extra equipment in turn affects how the boom responds. These mechanical tests are important because NASA and commercial space partners could use long composite booms for several functions including deployable solar sails and deployable structures, such as towers for solar panels, that could support humans living and working on the Moon.
Redwire will be able to compare the results of the physical testing at NASA Langley to their own numerical models and get a better understanding of their hardware. NASA’s Game Changing Development program in the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate funded the tests.
Researchers conducted the tests inside a 100-foot tower at NASA Langley.NASA/Mark Knopp Share
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Last Updated May 29, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 4 min read
Sols 4549-4552: Keeping Busy Over the Long Weekend
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on May 23, 2025 — Sol 4548, or Martian day 4,548 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 07:17:19 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Earth planning date: Friday, May 23, 2025
In Wednesday’s mission update, Alex mentioned that this past Monday’s plan included a “marathon” drive of 45 meters (148 feet). Today, we found ourselves almost 70 meters (230 feet) from where we were on Wednesday. This was our longest drive since the truly enormous 97-meter (318-foot) drive back on sol 3744.
Today’s plan looks a little different from our usual weekend plans. Because of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday on Monday, the team will next assemble on Tuesday, so an extra sol had to be appended to the weekend plan. This extra sol is mostly being used for our next drive (about 42 meters or 138 feet), which means that all of the science that we have planned today can be done “targeted,” i.e., we know exactly where the rover is. As a result, we can use the instruments on our arm to poke at specific targets close to the rover, rather than filling our science time exclusively with remote sensing activities of farther-away features.
The rover’s power needs are continuing to dominate planning. Although we passed aphelion (the farthest distance Mars is from the Sun) a bit over a month ago and so are now getting closer to the Sun, we’re just about a week away from winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. This is the time of year when Gale Crater receives the least amount of light from the Sun, leading to particularly cold temperatures even during the day, and thus more power being needed to keep the rover and its instruments warm. On the bright side, being at the coldest time of the year means that we have only warmer sols to look forward to!
Given the need to keep strictly to our allotted power budget, everyone did a phenomenal job finding optimizations to ensure that we could fit as much science into this plan as possible. All together, we have over four hours of our usual targeted and remote sensing activities, as well as over 12 hours of overnight APXS integrations.
Mastcam is spending much of its time today looking off in the distance, particularly focusing on the potential boxwork structures that we’re driving towards. These structures get two dedicated mosaics, totaling 42 images between the two of them. Mastcam will also observe “Mishe Mokwa” (a small butte about 15 meters, or 49 feet, to our south) and some bedrock troughs in our workspace, and will take two tau observations to characterize the amount of dust in the atmosphere.
ChemCam has just one solo imaging-only observation in this plan: an RMI mosaic of Texoli butte off to our east. ChemCam will be collaborating with APXS to take some passive spectral observations (i.e., no LIBS) to measure the composition of the atmosphere. Mastcam and ChemCam will also be working together on observations of LIBS activities. This plan includes an extravagant three LIBS, on “Orocopia Mountains,” “Dripping Springs,” and “Mountain Center.” Both Mastcam and ChemCam also have a set of “dark” observations intended to characterize the performance of the instruments with no light on their sensors, something that’s very important for properly calibrating their measurements.
Our single set of arm activities includes APXS, DRT, and MAHLI activities on “Camino Del Mar” and “Mount Baden-Powell,” both of which are bedrock targets in our workspace.
Of course, I can’t forget to mention the collection of Navcam observations that we have in this plan to monitor the environment. These include a 360-degree survey looking for dust devils, two line-of-sight activities to measure the amount of dust in the air within Gale, and three cloud movies. As always, we’ve also got a typical collection of REMS, RAD, and DAN activities throughout.
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Last Updated May 27, 2025 Related Terms
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