When Ross Brockwell emerged from a 1,700-square-foot habitat meant to simulate life on Mars after 378 days, he wanted to see his loved ones, eat seafood and jump into the ocean.
But a small part of him hoped that when the habitat doors opened on July 6, he would really be on the Red Planet rather than in Houston.
Brockwell participated in NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Analogue Exploration (CHAPEA-1) mission, along with three others. The mission was designed to help scientists learn more about the challenges future astronauts will likely face while living on Mars, where NASA hopes to land astronauts by 2040.
The mission mimicked the conditions of space travel: communication delays, limited resources, and cramped living quarters. To Brockwell, who was the mission’s structural engineer, it felt real.
“NASA has done an incredible job of creating an immersive, high-fidelity experience,” he told Business Insider.
Not everyone can live on Mars
The CHAPEA team celebrates the birthday of Ross Brockwell, left, inside the habitat. The NASA/CHAPEA crew
According to Brockwell, there are certain qualities that are important for space travel. “Patience is one of them, as well as the ability to adapt to an isolated and confined environment,” he added.
These attributes can also help you when you observe the same group of people day after day with no way out.
Fortunately for the CHAPEA team, everyone got along well and became close before they even set foot in the habitat, Brockwell said, which helped reduce the feeling of isolation.
Their camaraderie was also particularly important because of the delay in communicating with the outside world. Mars is so far from Earth that messages take more than 20 minutes to arrive in each direction.
It wasn’t a surprise, Brockwell said, but it took some getting used to. “There are times when you really wish you could talk in real time, but it’s just not possible,” he said.
Homesickness is real
The 1,700-square-foot CHAPEA habitat includes individual living quarters for four volunteer crew members. NASA/Bill Stafford
The crew members didn’t just miss their friends and family during the mission. “We all missed the ocean, the sun, the wind and the forests,” Brockwell said. “You could feel their absence.”
There was a small garden system, which provided a little greenery, and Brockwell did not care for it. food in general.
“Given the constraints, it’s really impressive how healthy, tasty and simple it is,” he said.
However, there are only a limited number of different dishes available. After a while, the crew began experimenting with new combinations for more variety.
For example, they added ginger fish to potato soup. “It was fun to be creative during the mission,” he said. But they had to be careful with resources.
Part of the mission was to assess how the crew performed without their food supplies being replenished, as they would be if they were actually on Mars, NASA said.
The finiteness of everyday objects becomes immediately apparent, Brockwell said.
But you might fall in love with it
A CHAPEA crew member participates in a simulated “Marswalk” in a 1,200-square-foot sandbox to mimic the Martian landscape. The NASA/CHAPEA crew
Most of the crew members’ days were fairly routine, filled with activities like treadmill workouts, cooking, talking to their families, and mission-related tasks like monitoring and maintaining the vehicles. They also simulated a trip to the surface of Mars through extravehicular activity.
“The spacewalks were all really exciting,” Brockwell said. “The virtual reality was amazing.”
In their free time, the crew played games or solved puzzles. Brockwell read space-themed books like “Failure Is Not an Option” by Gene Kranz and “Endurance” by Scott Kelly.
In fact, Brockwell has read through most of the habitat library, including James M. Tabor’s “Blind Descent.” It may seem odd that NASA would include a book describing some of the terrifying dangers of cave exploration in a mission about life on Mars, but Brockwell said he recognizes its parallels to space exploration. “It was a really interesting book,” he said.
Despite the challenges he encountered during the simulation, Brockwell would love to visit Mars one day. “I would definitely go if I had the chance,” he said.
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