After 378 Days in a Simulated Mars Habitat, NASA's CHAPEA 2 Crew Steps Outside

As of November 2, 2026: the four volunteers of NASA's second CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission are out of their simulated Mars habitat at Johnson Space Center in Houston. They stepped outside on Saturday, October 31, at the end of a mission NASA counts as 378 days, and are due to spend about two weeks in post-mission evaluations and debriefs with NASA scientists. We found no published findings from this mission or from the first one.

Outside for the first time in more than a year

Ross Elder (commander), Ellen Ellis (medical officer), Matthew Montgomery (science officer) and James Spicer (flight engineer) entered the 1,700-square-foot Mars Dune Alpha habitat, 3D-printed with ICON's Vulcan construction system, on October 19, 2025. A NASA photo shows the four posing "outside for the first time in more than a year" after the mission ended. Johnson Space Center director Vanessa Wyche greeted them, Reuters reported.

"It's been a hell of a year," Ellis said in remarks after the exit, Reuters reported, calling the crew "analog astronauts living in captivity of our own free will." "For Mars, the risks are great," Elder said, according to Reuters. "But through seeking understanding, strong vision and leadership, creativity, fortitude, hard work and incredible foundation, the goal of putting humans on Mars is not only achievable, but rather inevitable."

Wyche spoke about the delayed messages the crew lived with: "These delays require patience, careful planning and greater independence," she said, according to Reuters, qualities "that will be essential for future astronauts traveling millions of miles from home."

What the year involved

NASA says the crew grew crops, managed limited resources, worked through communication delays and carried out suited simulated spacewalks, which NASA calls Marswalks, on a red-sand simulated Mars surface inside the building that houses the habitat. They also ran robotic operations, maintained the habitat and exercised, and NASA planned for them to test a potable water dispenser and diagnostic medical equipment. Their families heard from them only by email, with a Mars-like delay.

Around day 200, in May, the crew worked through a simulated two-week loss of signal that mimics the blackout when Mars passes behind the Sun, with no contact with mission control, relying on preplanned procedures and the resources on hand. The same NASA update said the crew also lived with delayed communications, limited supplies and simulated equipment malfunctions. On those resource limits, Montgomery said: "Having limited resources, be it tools, equipment, software, supplies, or no internet, really bounds what you have to solve problems."

In their last audio log for NASA's Houston We Have a Podcast, recorded on mission day 321, the crew described daily life. Everything they consumed was recorded: "every sip of water, every shake of the salt shaker goes to NASA," Spicer said. Ellis said they had been given "a short course in phlebotomy" and routinely drew their own blood. Montgomery said "pretty much every EVA" included building something. Elder found the habitat "eerily quiet" and said he missed "the sound of weather, busy streets."

Asked what they were looking forward to, Spicer named "a long hot shower" and noted that "none of us have driven a car in over a year." Ellis wanted to stand in a grocery store, "especially in the produce section." Montgomery expected that "everything's going to be a lot more vivid."

Who they are

When NASA named the crew in September 2025, it described Elder as a major and experimental test pilot in the U.S. Air Force, from Williamstown, West Virginia; Ellis as a colonel and acquisitions officer in the U.S. Space Force, from North Kingstown, Rhode Island; Montgomery as a Los Angeles hardware engineering design consultant who works with technology startups; and Spicer as a technical director in the aerospace and defense industry. Emily Phillips and Laura Marie were the alternate crew.

What NASA hopes to learn

CHAPEA is facilitated by NASA's Human Research Program. NASA says the data could show how limited food and exercise systems affect what a crew can achieve, including spacewalks on Mars, and could help it build decision-support systems for crews working with long communication delays. It also says the data can aid preparation for its lunar missions by optimizing food system design, crew time and bandwidth on its Deep Space Network, and help flight doctors and psychologists strengthen medical care and behavioral support. NASA's About CHAPEA page says the results will help it judge the risk of its planned exploration food system and inform its standards, vehicle mass and volume requirements, and "resource-risk trades" for long missions.

"This mission has been incredibly valuable in starting to teach us how to understand requirements for year-long missions, including medical and psychological care, via communication delays," said Michael Stenger, chief scientist for the Human Research Program.

How it compares with Mission 1

The first crew, Kelly Haston (commander), Ross Brockwell (flight engineer), Nathan Jones (medical officer) and Anca Selariu (science officer), lived in the same habitat from June 25, 2023 to July 6, 2024, also a 378-day mission by NASA's count. "The missions are intended to be repeatable, so we try not to have a lot of differences between them," CHAPEA principal investigator Grace Douglas said on NASA's podcast, so that results hold "across crews and not specific to a crew." With Mission 2 complete, she said, "we'll now have two complete sets of data."

What is known, and what is not

• Now: the crew is due to spend about two weeks in evaluations and debriefs. Douglas said they quarantine during this period so the final baseline data is collected "while they're healthy," not because of any added risk.
• Results: none published that we could find. NASA has given no date, and searches of PubMed, Europe PMC and NASA's Technical Reports Server on November 2 turned up no CHAPEA results paper.
• The delay: NASA's own pages describe it differently. Its November 2025 article cites "22-minute communication delays"; its October 2026 article says delays of "up to 45 minutes each way"; its 2024 summary of Mission 1 said "up to 44-minutes roundtrip"; and NASA podcast host Kenna Pell put a one-way signal at "three to twenty-three minutes." (Our arithmetic: twice the podcast's 23-minute one-way maximum is 46 minutes, so a round trip of up to 44 minutes fits that range; 45 minutes in each direction does not.)
• What comes next: NASA is recruiting volunteers for its Moon and Mars Exploration Analog mission, "set to begin no earlier than August 2027" at Johnson Space Center. It combines elements of NASA's HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog) and CHAPEA missions "into a single, integrated campaign": crews will live in the former HERA habitat as a simulated transit spacecraft, then in the 3D-printed surface habitat the second CHAPEA crew used. NASA's Mission 1 page still describes CHAPEA as "the first of three one-year simulated Mars missions," and we found no third CHAPEA crew named on NASA's pages.

Follow Mars on SpaceNexus

Missions, launch windows and costs are on our Mars Mission Planner; landing sites are in Solar System Exploration. On the business side, see Rocket Lab's protest of NASA's Mars Telecommunications Network award.

Sources

All accessed November 2, 2026.

• NASA: "NASA's CHAPEA Crew 'Returns' to Earth" (image article, November 2, 2026)
• NASA Media Advisory M26-083: "NASA Invites Media to Crew Completion of Yearlong Mars Simulation" (October 27, 2026)
• NASA: "NASA's Simulated Mars Crew Marks One Year Inside Habitat" (October 19, 2026)
• NASA Houston We Have a Podcast, episode 442: "CHAPEA 2: Audio Log 4" (October 23, 2026; transcript)
• NASA: "NASA's Simulated Mars Mission Marks 200 Days Inside Habitat" (May 7, 2026)
• NASA: "CHAPEA Crew Begins Stay Inside NASA's Mars Habitat for Second Mission" (November 25, 2025)
• NASA: "NASA Announces CHAPEA Crew for Year-Long Mars Mission Simulation" (September 5, 2025)
• NASA: "First Mars Crew Completes Yearlong Simulated Red Planet NASA Mission" (July 10, 2024)
• NASA CHAPEA pages: overview, About CHAPEA, habitat and How to Apply
• Reuters (Will Dunham): "NASA crew emerges after 378 days in isolation in 3D-printed habitat" (November 1, 2026, via the Honolulu Star-Advertiser)
• NASA Human Research Program: "NASA Seeks Volunteers for Yearlong Simulated Mission to Moon, Mars"
• NASA: CHAPEA Mission 1 page
• Searches for "CHAPEA" in PubMed (U.S. National Library of Medicine), Europe PMC and NASA's Technical Reports Server (November 2, 2026)