Audience: Middle and High School Students
One of the strongest challenges of space travel is the lack of communication with one’s home planet. Photo via Flickr.
Worlds beyond our own have fascinated kids and adults alike since we knew of their existence. Talk has spread about space travel — humans being sent past the Moon — to Mars, for instance. What would you need to survive? Food, shelter, and other survival aspects are immediately brought to mind, but the one critical aspect often overlooked is isolation. In the quest to understand the psychological and emotional toll of long-duration space missions, initiatives have emerged, shedding light on the human experience of isolation in space.
Welcome to CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), NASA’s ambitious expedition where four ordinary individuals— taken from applications from the general public — simulate the lives of Martian colonists for 378 days. Directed closely by mission control, these participants delve into the intricacies of daily life on Mars. Their daily routines involve consuming astronaut food, conducting experiments, maintaining the habitat, and navigating the challenges of living in close quarters with strangers. The experiment evaluates whether individuals can maintain their physical and mental well-being under the strains of isolation, a fundamental factor in the success of any Mars mission.
The habitat constructed for the experiment mirrors the anticipated living conditions on Mars, built using materials akin to Martian regolith. Regolith is present on Earth and the Moon as well — it’s a blanket of loose deposits covering solid rock. Because NASA doesn’t have enough Martian rock, CHAPEA used a proprietary, airtight cement-based material called Lavacrete, which extrudes from a 3-D printer layer by layer like orange toothpaste, mimicking regolith. Each participant had a modest living space, consisting of a bedroom, a lounge area, work stations, a medical station, and even a crop garden. The vegetables aren’t intended for food but rather for mental health. (Growing plants, one CHAPEA researcher said, may “provide psychological benefits for astronauts living in isolated, confined environments away from Earth.”)
To maintain the integrity of the experiment, NASA has kept details about the participants' experiences under wraps. However, it's evident that they will face numerous challenges, including resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, and environmental stressors, all akin to those anticipated on an actual Mars mission.
The strongest challenge that this experiment intends to demonstrate is the lack of communication between the two planets. Even the smallest exchanges can take 45 mins to get from Earth to Mars. Every piece of communication, whether video, audio, or biostatic records, will be sent to a digital queue. The most urgent and/or smallest transmissions take priority. However, during one three-week period in the middle of the experiment, representing the farthest distance (more than 250 million miles) between the two planets, no contact will be possible at all.
When there’s nothing to do, things start to get boring fast, which can easily take a toll on one’s mental state. The experiment looked at research over the past eight decades in the field of isolation studies, which was started during World War II when the British Royal Air Force became worried about pilots’ performance on solo reconnaissance missions. Officers observed that a pilot might have poorer observational abilities the longer he flew. The worst of it, however, was not inattention; monotony reduced the pilots’ proficiency in even the simplest tasks. Similarly, in research conducted by psychologists at McGill University in Montreal, students were paid $20 per day to sleep on a bed in a lit, soundproof gray cubicle. They proved the earlier findings, even noting that it led to a change of attitude, as well as hallucinations and reminiscence.
For some, the most pressing aspect is that life will move on without you. “As a mother,” Kacie Jones, the wife of one of the participants in CHAPEA, said, “I don’t know that I could even consider leaving my children for a year.” Her husband Nathan made it clear that he wanted to be kept as busy as possible during the experiment, leaving as little time as possible to worry about his wife and their sons. So much time will have been lost— a year on Mars is one you can never get back on Earth.
The CHAPEA experiment, which will end in July 2024, sheds light on the complex challenges of isolation in space exploration. As humanity inches closer to the reality of Martian colonization, understanding and addressing these challenges are paramount. By conducting such experiments, scientists and researchers can better prepare for the mental and emotional well-being of future astronauts embarking on interplanetary journeys. As we push the boundaries of space exploration, we must not forget the human element and the profound impact of isolation on the human psyche.
Bibliography:
“Analyzing the Psychological Impact of the First Mars Habitat Simulation.” KBR, https://www.kbr.com/en/insights-news/stories/analyzing-psychological-impact-first-mars-habitat-simulation.
“CHAPEA.” NASA, 14 Jan. 2021, https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/.
Johnson, NASA. “CHAPEA Mission 1 Crew Ingress.” YouTube, Video, 26 June 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEa88ZZWAEQ.
Rich, Nathaniel. “Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?” The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/magazine/mars-isolation-experiment.html.
Sauers, Elisha. “NASA’s Mars Isolation Experiment Hits Half-Year Mark.” Mashable, 30 Dec. 2023, https://mashable.com/article/nasa-chapea-mars-crew.
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