The four-member crew of NASA's CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission completed its simulated Mars journey on Oct. 31, 2026. Participants Matthew Montgomery, James Spicer, Ross Elder and Ellen Ellis spent more than a year in isolation inside the experimental habitat before stepping outside for the first time since the mission began.

CHAPEA is NASA's program for reproducing on Earth the conditions of a long-duration Mars mission: isolation, confinement in a surface habitat, communication delays with mission control and resource constraints. The goal is to study how those conditions affect crew health, both physical and psychological, and performance — data the agency considers necessary to design future human missions to the red planet.

A duration of more than a year brings the analog mission closer to the real time a round trip to Mars would require. During that period, the crew carried out operational tasks and experiments inside the habitat, following protocols similar to those of an actual space expedition.

The results of CHAPEA will be used to refine NASA's plans for the Artemis missions and, later on, for the first crews sent to Mars, particularly regarding life support, food, stress management and maintenance of work capacity during long-duration missions.