NASA finalizes crew for simulated trip to Mars

NASA has finalized four crew members for its next Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) mission, a simulated mission to Mars inside a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The crew, which includes Abhishek Bhagat, Kamak Ebadi, Susan Hilbig, and Ariana Lutsic, will enter the ground-based HERA facility, a unique 650-square-foot habitat, on January 26 to live and work like astronauts for 45 days during the simulated mission. The quartet will exit the facility on March 11, after they end their simulated trip and return to Earth.

The mission marks the first of four simulated missions to Mars that researchers will carry out in 2024 as part of the HERA campaign. Each mission will include a different crew of four astronaut-like research volunteers.

HERA enables researchers to study how crew members adapt to the isolation, confinement, and work conditions astronauts will experience during future spaceflight missions. Crew members will conduct science, operational, and maintenance tasks while facing communication delays with the outside world lasting up to five minutes as they approach the Red Planet.

HERA's new crew will participate in 18 human health studies throughout the simulated mission to Mars. The experiments will assess the psychological, physiological, and behavioral responses of crew members millions of miles away from their home planet.