NASA volunteers finish mission, during which they lived on Mars for more than a year

Four volunteers have successfully completed the mission, during which they spent 378 days in a 3D-printed simulator of a Mars base. The corresponding video was released by NASA.

The mission is called Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA). It started last June in preparation for a real mission to the Red Planet.

The experiment involved researcher Kelly Gaston, civil engineer Ross Brockwell, emergency room physician Nathan Jones, and U.S. Navy microbiologist Anka Selariu.

They were locked on a “virtual planet” at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of the first of NASA’s three-year simulation studies. During the mission, the crew modeled various situations.

The team maintained their equipment and habitat, and worked under the additional stresses that a Martian crew would face, including delays in communication with Earth, limited resources, and isolation.