Back from Mars: Four scientists successfully complete NASA's one-year mock mission

Four astronauts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have successfully completed a 378-day experiment in a facility designed to simulate living on Mars.

The US space agency's first Mars mission, led by team leader Kelly Haston and including Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell, and Nathan Jones, focused on researching what it will take to put humans on the Red Planet.

In June last year, the four volunteers entered the simulated Mars habitat at Johnson Space Center in Texas. The habitat, named Mars Dune Alpha, is a 3D-printed, 1,700 square-foot (160 square-meter) facility, complete with bedrooms, a gym, common areas, and a vertical farm for growing food.

This mission is the first in the CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) series of three, which began on June 25, 2023, when the volunteers were sealed inside the habitat. The NASA crew carried out various experiments in their private quarters and workstations, including an area with red sand resembling the surface of Mars.

The experiments included growing vegetables, conducting "Marswalks," and operating under additional stressors such as communication delays with Earth, including their families, along with the isolation and confinement.

"They have spent more than a year in this habitat conducting crucial science, most of it nutrition-based and how that impacts their performance ... as we prepare to send people on to the Red Planet," Steve Koerner, deputy director at NASA's Johnson Space Center, told the crowd.

Towards the end of the 2030s, NASA also plans to send humans back to the Moon under its Artemis program to learn how to live there long-term, which will help prepare for a trip to Mars.