Matthew Montgomery and three other engineers emerged from a 378-day simulated Mars mission at NASA's Johnson Space Center on October 31, 2026.
Four engineers emerged from a 158-square-metre, 3D-printed habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on 31 October after spending just more than a year inside it for a simulated mission on Mars, Nature reported on 9 November 2026.
The exercise was the second in a series of extended NASA simulations that aim to test how long-duration space missions affect astronauts' health and performance. For more than a year, the crew members grew their own crops, conducted science experiments and performed 'Marswalks' on a model of the planet's surface outside their habitat.
The mission replicated communication delays that astronauts on Mars would experience when contacting Earth: messages from the crew to mission control and vice versa took 13–22 minutes to arrive, varying with the distance between Earth and Mars. The crew also dealt with a planned two-week communication blackout, with no access to mission control or the outside world, similar to what Martian astronauts would face when the Sun blocks transmission of radio signals between Mars and Earth.
Matthew Montgomery, a hardware-engineering design consultant and co-owner of a film-production company, served as the mission's science officer. Prior to the mission, he had worked in controlled-environment agriculture and studied factors such as the best LED lighting for crop growth, so he led the growing of crops in the simulation.
"I've grown leafy greens, peppers and tomatoes outside of the mission in large growth facilities, and we were growing some of those same crops in the mission," Montgomery said. "It was also fun to grow those plants — just interacting with Earth-based things like plant life has a cognitive benefit as well as a nutrient benefit."
Geology was another major part of the mission. The crew analysed rock samples, performed mineral identification and simulated core analysis that Martian astronauts would do to study the geologic history of Mars.
The crew spent time together before the mission, including a winter camping expedition in Wyoming where they encountered a blizzard. They also spent five weeks together in pre-training before going into isolation. Montgomery said they had a really good dynamic as a team inside the habitat, and conflict was very minimal.
The crew spent about a month preparing for the blackout, communicating with ground teams to ensure they had all the procedures, schedules and goals for the two weeks. They put safety plans in place to make sure they had reviewed the right protocols if something went wrong.
The lessons learnt from these simulations will help NASA to understand how isolation and limited resources affect astronauts' well-being and productivity, the agency says. NASA will use the results to inform protocols for crewed missions to Mars, which it has said could happen as soon as the early 2030s, as well as future trips to the Moon.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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