Four volunteers walked out of NASA’s Mars Dune Alpha habitat on Oct. 31 after 378 days with no windows, no outside sounds and no real-time calls home, NASA reports.
- Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, James Spicer and Matthew Montgomery entered the ~1,700 sq ft 3D-printed habitat at Johnson Space Center on Oct. 19, 2025 for CHAPEA Mission 2.
- They did simulated Marswalks, robotics, habitat maintenance, exercise and crop growing, with communication delays of up to 22 minutes each way.
- While they were inside, Artemis II flew around the Moon and the ISS hit 25 years of continuous crewing.
Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche: their work is about “preparing for the challenges of human exploration beyond Earth.”
My take
A year without real-time family calls takes a different kind of grit. This is how we learn to keep crews healthy on the way to Mars.
God Bless, and Use the Source!
