NASA’s second Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog mission, known as CHAPEA, ended on October 31, 2026, when four volunteers emerged from their simulated Mars habitat at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer had spent 378 days living and working inside the facility.
The crew’s departure completed a mission that began on October 19, 2025. Elder served as commander, Ellis as medical officer, Montgomery as science officer, and Spicer as flight engineer. The team’s daily activities combined scientific work with the practical tasks of maintaining a shared home under simulated exploration conditions.
NASA conducted the study in a 3D-printed habitat measuring 1,700 square feet. Inside that confined environment, the crew exercised, maintained equipment, grew plants, and performed simulated spacewalks. Resource limitations, isolation, and delayed communications formed part of the operating conditions described in the agency’s mission completion announcement.
Living and Working Inside the Habitat
The CHAPEA facility combines individual crew quarters with shared spaces for cooking, exercise, medical activities, recreation, and work. It also includes crop-growing space, a technical work area, and two bathrooms. The arrangement places personal routines and mission duties within the same restricted living environment.
The simulation includes meal preparation, hygiene, maintenance, science activities, sleep, and personal time. Those ordinary activities are part of the research because they consume crew time and resources throughout a long mission. NASA studies physical and behavioral health alongside task performance.
Simulated surface operations add another type of work to the schedule. Crew members practice activities associated with leaving a habitat and operating outside it, including simulated spacewalks. Communications constraints change how the team coordinates those activities with support personnel.
NASA’s CHAPEA program consists of extended ground missions designed to study yearlong stays on Mars. The first crew completed its mission on July 6, 2024. The second mission continued the program’s study of small crews living in an isolated habitat for more than a year.
How NASA Plans to Use the Data
The research connects food, workload, habitat operations, and health. NASA intends to use CHAPEA data to assess exploration food systems and their relationship to crew performance. That work also informs the mass and volume assigned to supplies and the tradeoffs involved in allocating limited resources.
The second mission’s completion preparations identified additional applications, including crew-time allocation, communications planning, and medical and behavioral support. NASA also described potential uses in planning Deep Space Network bandwidth and supporting future lunar missions.
Following their exit, the four volunteers were scheduled to spend two weeks in medical checks and post-mission debriefings with NASA researchers. Those activities extend the study beyond the habitat stay by documenting the crew’s health and experience after completing the simulation.
