A Year in Mars Dune Alpha

NASA's Curious Universe

Katie Konans

Science

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To prepare for the day when humans travel to Mars, NASA is conducting a one-year experiment in a Mars simulation environment. So what’s it like to spend a year in CHAPEA, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog? In this season finale episode, travel through the airlock with voice recordings made by the four-person crew, including what it feels like—and smells like—inside their realistic 3-D printed habitat and how virtual reality gives them the sensation of walking on the Red Planet. NASA's Curious Universe is an official NASA podcast. Discover more adventures with NASA astronauts, engineers, scientists, and other experts at nasa.gov/curiousuniverse

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello Earthlings.
0:03.0	Hello.
0:04.0	It is September 18th. This is Anka and Nate.
0:09.0	And we are currently in the airlock.
0:13.0	There is air in the airlock right now, thankfully.
0:16.0	This is what Mars airlock sounds like.
0:27.6	This is a message from Mars Dune Alpha.
0:34.6	Inside this habitat, four intrepid crew members are surviving in a foreign, isolated home. They work together, they eat together, and occasionally when they need to
0:39.9	suit up and leave the safety of their habitat, they go through the airlock.
0:44.3	This is where we put on our spacesuits and it's where we equalize pressure to either exit or re-enter the habitat.
0:58.0	If you're thinking to yourself, I thought there weren't any humans on Mars.
1:00.0	Yep, you're right.
1:02.0	But this mission will help us get there.
1:05.0	It's called Chippea.
1:07.0	Crew, Health and Performance Exploration Analog.
1:10.0	Before NASA sends humans to Mars for real, we're practicing here on Earth,
1:15.6	at a specially designed Mars habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas.
1:21.6	The crew gave us an inside look.
1:23.6	We have a window that we use, air quotes around the word window, that it used a TV with a video feed of the outside of our habitat.
1:32.3	And we can see the Martian sunrise with it out the window and then the sun basically goes over our head and we eventually see the shadow of our habitat on the ground, and eventually throughout night we see the stars.
1:46.5	And it's really pretty.
1:48.5	If I could sum up Chapia in just a couple of words, the words would be almost Mars.
	...

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