From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On Episode 423, the CHAPEA 2 crew shares the latest updates from inside their yearlong simulated Mars mission at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, including updates on daily life, holiday celebrations, and habitat routines. NASA experts discuss how CHAPEA simulates Mars EVAs and spacewalk operations on Earth. This episode was recorded in April 20, 2026.
Transcript
Kenna Pell
Houston We Have a Podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 423: CHAPEA 2: Audio Log 2. I’m Kenna Pell, and I will be your host today. On this podcast we bring in the experts: scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight, and more.
We’re back with another audio log from the CHAPEA crew. CHAPEA, or Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, is a yearlong analog mission in a habitat right here on Earth that’s simulating very closely what it would be like to live on Mars. We’re lucky enough to have check-ins with the crew: Commander Ross Elder, Flight Engineer James Spicer, Medical Officer Ellen Ellis, and Science Officer Matthew Montgomery.
This is the second analog mission for CHAPEA. This isn’t so much a technology demonstration or a dress rehearsal for a human Mars mission. The primary purpose of this study is human research – a deep study into understanding what life would be like if you were living on the red planet for a full year.
Now, as much as we’d like to have live interviews with them, they are simulating what it would be like on Mars. So video interviews, phone conversations, or really any form of communicating with Earth will be significantly delayed. Any information sent at the speed of light could take somewhere on the order of three to twenty-three minutes, and that’s one way, depending on relative distance between Earth and Mars as they orbit the Sun. This makes a two-way conversation, very, very difficult. So to meet the needs of fitting in this analog, the crew is recording an audio log based on the questions that we have draf …