Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 329, Mars Audio Log Number 8. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, 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 Chappia crew. Chappia or Crew Health and

Performance Exploration Analog is a year-long

analog mission in a habitat right here on Earth that is simulating very closely what

it would be like to live on Mars and we're lucky enough to have monthly check-ins with the crew.

Commander Kelly Haston, flight engineer Ross Brockwell, medical officer Nathan Jones, and

science officer Anca Salaru.

To meet the needs of fitting in with this analog and simulating significant

communication delays between Earth and Mars that prohibit us from having a live conversation, the

crew is recording an audiologue based off of the questions that we draft for them.

On this episode, we'll play the recording of their eighth month in the Habitat,

which is here at the NASA Johnson Space Center and was recorded in February 2024.

We're also bringing on a special guest to learn even more about Chappia.

This month is on another angle of scientific research, biostatistics.

We've reviewed a number of different investigations happening in Chappia, from crop production to food science, nutrition exercise, behavioral sciences, and more.

Scientists in these respective fields are, of course, gathering data during the Chappia mission, but built into the scientific

process is not only collecting the data, but starting from the ground with the experimental

design on how data is collected to best answer the research questions.

Then there is the analysis, the interpretation, and the presentation of the data to summarize

...