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BY Taylor Hatmaker

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One of NASA’s strangest, most daunting missions just wrapped up – and its crew didn’t even leave Earth’s atmosphere.

Four crew members emerged over the weekend after spending a full year cooped up inside a 1,700-square-foot habitat designed to perfectly simulate life on Mars. The mission, stationed at Johnson Space Center in Houston, is the next best thing to a real mission to Mars, giving scientists an opportunity for a lower stakes run-through without the extreme risks posed by the red planet.

The CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission kicked off on October 19, 2025 and was the second of its kind, following a previous isolation mission that ended in 2024.…