What I Learned About Earth After a Year on "Mars"

The CHAPEA crew egress from their simulated Mars mission July 6, 2024, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. From left: Kelly Haston, Nathan Jones, Anca Selariu, and Ross Brockwell. Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

By Elise Cutts (BS ’19)

Ross Brockwell (MS ’01) had plenty of time to mull over what he wanted for his first meal back on Earth.

On June 25, 2023, the Caltech alum and three crewmates sealed the door of their 3D-printed habitat at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The door would stay shut for 378 days. During this year-plus, the crew inside resided, for all practical purposes, on Mars, eating astronaut rations and living just like a crew on the Red Planet would.

Brockwell served as the flight engineer on this, NASA’s first CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission, a simulated to Mars carried out on Earth under the watchful eyes of NASA scientists and engineers. The idea was to study how astronauts cope with isolation and other challenges so that mission planners can set up future space pioneers for success on other worlds. It is an increasingly practical problem, given plans to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon and the eventual goal of putting astronaut boots on the Red Planet’s rusty ground.

We interviewed Brockwell before and during his mission to simulated Mars. Here, we catch up with him after the mission’s end to hear about his experience, ask how the mission changed his perspective, and, yes, find out what he ate first after “returning to Earth.”

It’s a little silly, but I am wondering: What was the first thing you ate after the mission ended?

It's not a silly question at all. It was a major source of conversation before we got back to Earth. You know, I had so many things that I was looking forward to, I couldn't really decide. I had thought a lot about seafood, as I told you back before the mission started. But Houston is not exactly the seafood capital of the United States. People had been talking about how a cheeseburger was kind of the fallback, and so I just got a cheeseburger—classic as you can get—but it was very good.

What are some things that were different than you’d expected they would be before you stepped foot in the habitat?

The dynamic with Mission Control, for one. Part of the mission was to study how the crew and Mission Control would need to interact with that time delay. [Editor’s Note: Because Mars is so far away, sending a message from Mars to Earth or vice versa takes between three and 20 minutes depending on where the planets are in their orbits.] I've never been an astronaut, so I didn't know how it works, typically, between Houston and Florida and the space station. So that was a really interesting experience. It was eye opening and fun.

Generally, I did expect it to be really exciting to kind of put myself “on Mars.” Fortunately, that played out as expected. It was a lot of fun.

What were some of the most interesting experiences?

There really were so many. The Marswalks—trips through the airlock out onto the surface—were of course interesting and exciting. The virtual reality surface missions were amazingly interesting and fun. The Martian environment it put you in was beautiful and fascinating. It gave you the feeling and the visuals of what it will be like for the first humans on Mars. We would explore, perform geological studies, and complete habitat-related tasks. And the non-VR Marswalks were also interesting experiences, doing similar science or building or fixing things, but with our real hands. They don’t want us to go into specific detail because they are repeating the study two more times, but they were great experiences with mission-realistic challenges.

The fact that the study and mission integrated multiple aspects of research toward informing deep space exploration provided for a consistently interesting experience overall: the science of the food, the exercise, the habitat functionality, the crew dynamics, the communication system. (I personally thought my experiment in hair science was interesting, although it was almost unanimously considered to be a failure.) The experience with our hydroponic garden was particularly interesting. It was fascinating to learn about and to think about the technical challenges of growing fresh food in Martian circumstances.

The food experience was great as well—very interesting and, as I’ve said, very healthy and enjoyable. And fun, really. In addition to that, it really was fascinating to experience how enjoyable it was to grow fresh food to supplement the space food, how grateful we all were for fresh greens and vegetables. Watching the Super Bowl on Mars (after having it beamed to us over a couple nights) was a great experience, it was fun for the crew, and very interesting to think about how important those kinds of connections to home will be for interplanetary explorers.

What were some of the most interesting experiences?

We’re not supposed to get too specific about some things. I wish we could. Maybe in later years, when all the missions are done, we can talk more specifically. But just the day to day with the crew was really fun; we had a really good dynamic.

And what were some of the more challenging parts of the mission for you?

Earth is a wonderful place, and nature and blue skies and seas and beaches and fresh air are all really wonderful. So, when you have to go without them for a year, you miss them. That was a challenge, but it was clearly part of the mission, and it will be part of going to Mars, of course. It was worth enduring.

What were some of the first things that you did once you were set free back on Earth?

Simply standing in the sunshine was amazing—you know, just feeling the warmth and radiation on you was wonderful. I went for a little run. There were lots of jokes about being cautious with that because it was summer in Houston; we left the habitat on July 6. But just having the horizon visible and being able to move freely and feel the weather and rain was amazing.

What’s next for you?

The next thing for me is to pick up where I left off with things with work and my personal life. But I'd really like to help this project any way I can over the next few years and, hopefully, I can find a way to make further contributions to space flight and to global issues.

I think space exploration should be an inspirational and central endeavor, something that people should support and be excited by and be interested in. And I've said before the mission and during the mission: I think people who question the value of committing time and resources to it should see how unifying it can be. I don't think it's a stretch to say that working on getting to Mars will connect us directly to a larger appreciation of our place in the cosmos and how wonderful it is, and how we should all work together on it.

Is there a perspective you think we earthlings should take away from your experience living in simulated space?

There's something about the self-contained part of it. It was restrictive, but I realized all the things you need in life are actually relatively simple.

That's not to say we shouldn't work on large-scale, complex things. But basic nutrition is super important, basic fitness is super important, and your connection to the ecosystem services that support your life is critically important. So, understanding and appreciating the systems that keep us all alive is critically important.

Just being part of a team and part of a community is a fundamental part of being human, so appreciate it, seek it out, and try to find a way to be a part of a group that's working on something important—working locally but thinking on a planetary scale.