NASA Selects Crew for Mars Mission-24

NASA Selects Crew for Mars Mission

In order to better inform its plans for human exploration of the Red Planet, NASA Selects Crew for Mars Mission to take part in their upcoming simulated one-year Mars surface expedition.

In spring 2025, CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), the second of three planned ground-based missions, is expected to launch.

Based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, a 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat is home to a four-person volunteer crew that lives and works on each CHAPEA mission.

The CHAPEA missions provide crucial scientific data to evaluate technologies and develop solutions for future missions to the Red Planet, while NASA seeks to build a long-term presence for scientific exploration and discovery on the Moon through the Artemis campaign.

More over half of the first CHAPEA crew’s yearlong mission has passed, and NASA is using the knowledge gathered from these simulated trips to advise crew health and performance support on future Mars excursions.

As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA plans to lay the groundwork for long-term scientific research at the Moon, land the first astronauts from other countries, a woman, and a person of color on the moon, and get ready for human missions to Mars that will benefit all people.

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The Mars Dune Alpha habitat replicates various aspects of a Martian expedition, such as resource scarcity, equipment malfunctions, communication breakdowns, and environmental stressors. Crop growth, robotic operations, habitat upkeep, exercise, and simulated spacewalks are among the crew’s responsibilities.

For efficient communication between crew members and mission control, NASA is seeking healthy, driven individuals who are 30-55 years old, nonsmokers, and fluent in English. Candidates should be highly motivated to have new and fulfilling activities and have a desire to support NASA’s efforts to get ready for the first-ever human mission to Mars.

Selection process for Volunteers

There will be additional normal NASA criteria for astronaut candidate applicants in the crew selection process. It is necessary to have a master’s degree in a STEM field—such as engineering, mathematics, biology, physics, or computer science—from an authorized university and to have at least two years of professional STEM experience or one thousand hours of aircraft piloting experience.

Those who have finished their two years of coursework in a doctorate degree in science, technology,Qualifications in test pilot programs, engineering, mathematics, and medicine will also be taken into consideration. Candidates who have completed military officer training or hold a bachelor of science in a STEM subject and have four years of professional experience may be given consideration.

The mission offers compensation for participation. During the candidate screening procedure, more details will be supplied.

Four volunteers were chosen by NASA to be part of a crew that would take part in a mock Mars expedition inside a habitat at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Starting on Friday, January 26, Abhishek Bhagat, Carli Domenico, Kamak Ebadi, and Susan Hilbig will live and work like astronauts for 45 days during the simulated journey to the Red Planet at the ground-based HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog) facility. On March 11, crew members will “return” to Earth and leave the facility.

There are two more volunteers that can serve as backup crew members.

Scientists can examine how crew members adjust to the confinement, isolation, and working circumstances astronauts may face on upcoming space missions thanks to HERA, without having to leave Earth.

While they “approach” Mars, crew members will perform maintenance, operations, and scientific duties while experiencing up to five-minute communication delays with Earth.

During the fictitious expedition, the new crew will take part in eighteen human health research. With millions of miles separating the crew members from their home planet, the trials will evaluate their behavioral, physiological, and psychological reactions.

HERA is now home to ten additional studies, seven of which were conducted by experts from outside the US. Together with ESA (European Space Agency), the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in the United Arab Emirates is the site of these multinational investigations.

Primary Crew

Abhishek Bhagat works as a research electrical engineer in the Cold Region Research and Engineering Lab of the U.S. Army Engineering Research and Development Center.

Bhagat graduated from Nagpur University in India with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He also holds master’s degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from California State University, Northridge, and Fairfax, Virginia’s University of North America. He is presently working on a master’s degree in space systems at Melbourne’s Florida Institute of Technology.

Neuroscientist Carli Domenico hails from San Antonio, Texas. She completed her doctoral studies in learning and memory-focused research at Baylor College of Medicine, where she examined brain circuits in a variety of animal models, including rats and pigeons. In addition to publishing in multiple journals, she has given speeches about her work at conferences, universities, and workshops.

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, Kamak Ebadi works as a robotics technician. He works on the spaceflight operations team that oversees NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Mars. By his work on orbital maps and navigation algorithms for the guided descent and precise landing of autonomous spacecraft on the Moon and Mars, Ebadi also contributes to NASA’s Artemis program and the Mars Sample Return mission.

Susan Hilbig is a physician assistant from Durham, North Carolina, who specializes in aerospace medicine and how people function in cramped, isolated spaces. Before graduating from Duke University’s School of Medicine with a master’s degree in physician assistant studies, she double majored in biology and Earth and ocean science during her academic career.