NASA's One-Year Fake Mars Habitat Lockup Experiment

NASA is conducting a year-long analog mission called CHAPEA to simulate life on Mars and study how it affects the crew's health, both physical and mental. The four crew members will live in a 3D-printed habitat with a Mars-like sandbox where they'll perform simulated missions. The mission seeks to learn how factors like diet, isolation, and time-delayed communication affect the crew's mood and ability to perform their jobs. The research team will control the crew's diets, environment, and activities to understand how these factors affect each other. The information gathered will help design the first actual missions to Mars and anticipate the health challenges that might arise from putting people on the surface of another planet for a year or more.