Four small rooms, a gym and a lot of red sand—NASA unveiled its new Mars‑simulation habitat on Tuesday. The facility, created for three planned experiments called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA), is located at the agency’s massive research base in Houston, Texas. It will host volunteers who will live there for a year at a time to test what life might be like on future missions to Earth’s neighbor.
Four volunteers will begin the first trial this summer. During the experiment NASA will monitor their physical and mental health to better understand human fortitude during long isolation. “With that data we can better understand astronauts’ resource use on Mars,” said Grace Douglas, lead researcher on the CHAPEA experiments. “We can really start to understand how we’re supporting them with what we’re providing them, and that’s going to be really important information for making critical resource decisions.” She added that such a distant mission comes with very strict mass limitations.
The volunteers will live inside a 1,700‑square‑foot (160‑square‑meter) home dubbed “Mars Dune Alpha.” The habitat includes two bathrooms, a vertical farm to grow salad, a dedicated medical‑care room, a relaxation area and several workstations. An airlock leads to an “outdoor” reconstruction of the Martian environment—still located inside the hangar. The red‑sand‑covered floor is scattered with equipment astronauts would likely use, such as a weather station, a brick‑making machine and a small greenhouse. A treadmill, equipped with straps to simulate the planet’s lower gravity, will allow the make‑believe astronauts to walk while suspended; “We really can’t have them just walking around in circles for six hours,” joked Suzanne Bell, head of NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory. The treadmill will be used to simulate long trips outside for sample collection, data gathering or infrastructure building.
The members of the first experiment team have not yet been named. NASA said selection “will follow standard NASA criteria for astronaut candidate applicants,” with a heavy emphasis on backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math. Researchers will regularly test the crew’s response to stressful situations, such as restricted water availability or equipment failures.
A special feature of the habitat is that it was 3D‑printed. “That is one of the technologies NASA is looking at as a potential way to build habitats on other planetary or lunar surfaces,” Douglas explained. While NASA is still in the early stages of preparing for a mission to Mars, most of its current focus remains on the upcoming Artemis missions, which aim to return humans to the Moon for the first time in half a century.
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