NASA's CHAPEA crew leaves its fake Mars habitat after 378 days sealed in

Four volunteers came out of NASA's pretend Mars base in Houston on Saturday after 378 days shut inside, ending the agency's second Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission, Dawn reported from an AFP report.

The crew went in on 19 October 2025. For just over a year they lived in a 158-square-metre, 3D-printed habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center, built to feel like a small base on Mars.

Who was inside

What they did for a year

• Grew food in simulated Martian soil.
• Talked to Earth with a delay, the way a real Mars crew would: messages to mission control took minutes, not seconds, so the crew had to solve most problems on their own.
• Lived on a fixed supply of resources, repaired and maintained the habitat, and ran mock Mars operations.

Johnson Space Center director Vanessa Wyche said the delays "require patience, careful planning and greater independence", the qualities future astronauts will need, and that the lessons would help pave the way to the Moon and "one day, Mars".

"It's been a hell of a year, analogue astronauts living in captivity of our own free will," Ellis said after stepping out. Elder said that "for Mars, the risks are great", but called a crewed landing achievable and, in his view, inevitable.

Why NASA runs these missions

NASA wants to know what keeps a small crew healthy, productive and getting on with each other over a long, isolated mission, before it sends anyone. The first CHAPEA crew spent the same 378 days inside between 2023 and 2024. This crew now faces about two weeks of medical checks and debriefs with NASA scientists.

The agency plans to land astronauts on the Moon again first, for the first time since 1972, and is aiming for a crewed Mars mission as early as the 2030s.

The numbers, for scale

• 378 days sealed in, or more than 12 months.
• 158 square metres of living space for four people, a little over 6 marla. Convert areas with our plot size converter.
• A real trip would be far longer: Mars is months away even at the best launch windows.

Read more from our science desk, including what six months in space does to astronauts' hearts.