When the door to the Mars Dune Alpha habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, closed behind the crew members of the first Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission, Georgia Tech graduate Ross Brockwell was transported 152 million simulated miles to the Red Planet.
For the next 378 days, Brockwell, a 1999 civil engineering graduate, and three other crew members participated in the study designed to gain insights into the challenges of deep space exploration and its effects on human health and performance. The crew performed robotic operations, habitat maintenance, agricultural activities, and simulated surface walks in the "sandbox" with the assistance of virtual reality while enduring intentional resource limitations, isolation, and confinement.
A structural engineer by day, he has always dreamed of space travel, and when a fellow Yellow Jacket alerted Brockwell to the application for the CHAPEA mission, he seized the opportunity.
"Sometimes, you get chances in your lifetime, and if I don't get a chance to actually go to Mars, if I can take this chance to help us get there as a planet, I'm honored," he said.
Once inside the 1,700-square-foot habitat, Brockwell's role as the CHAPEA mission's flight engineer focused on infrastructure, building design, and organizational leadership. As much as he learned from his tasks throughout the mission, like anticipating possible failure points and contingency planning, NASA learned even more through physical and cognitive monitoring.
"There was a lot of science, but some of the science was focused on us as the participants - our physiology and our performance - to make the mission as realistic as possible," he said.
Communication is a key element in space travel. Getting a message from Mars back to family and friends or mission control on Earth took 20 minutes on average for the crew inside the habitat, testing their ability to isolate. Without constant communication with the outside world, the crew fostered camaraderie through team activities and celebrated birthdays and holidays together. Brockwell's ingenuity wasn't limited to official tasks; he used a 3D printer to create a bracket for mounting a mini-basketball hoop.
Meals inside the habitat mirrored the shelf-stable food system of the International Space Station. While cultivated crops like tomatoes supplemented their main supply, Brockwell says there is a common misconception about astronaut food.
"I say with all sincerity, it was delicious." His favorite dish was a peanut chicken and wild rice mix, but the crew often got creative by mixing soups and proteins to create new dishes.
Other than the food, the biggest surprise to Brockwell was how quickly the mission was completed.
"I hoped and thought it would be that way, but we proved that a well-comprised crew can have a good time while doing this. There were a lot of clichéd expectations that there would be issues that we just didn't have. I think we demonstrated that a mission like this can be a huge success and an enjoyable, positive experience, not just something to be endured," he said.
Brockwell says that his time at Georgia Tech allowed him to learn the fundamentals of engineering principles and taught him to keep an open mind when exploring how things work. After receiving a master's degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology and completing the CHAPEA mission, he believes systems engineering can aid deep space exploration efforts for the next generation.
"Thinking about the effect of every component on every other component and the emergent properties from complex systems is crucial. I think that systems thinking is going to become increasingly important. Ecology and ecological thinking need to be part of it, especially for aerospace. If you're thinking about deep space exploration, an understanding of ecological principles and closed-loop systems will be key," he said.
At the end of the mission, Brockwell savored the sights and smells of Earth for the first time in over a year, saying that's what he missed the most. But if the opportunity arose to take the 152-million-mile flight to Mars, he'd be on the first ship out.
