Good afternoon my name is Steve Kerner I'm the deputy Center Director here at the Johnson Space
Center and I'm very excited to welcome you to the closing of the CHAPEA 1 Mission what a day
to celebrate and commemorate this was the first of three NASA analog missions to simulate amar's
environment 378 days ago these four dedicated individuals who you're about to meet entered
this 3D printed 1700 square foot Mars habitat habitat simulation they have spent more than a
year in this habitat conducting crucial science most of it nutrition-based and how that impacts
their performance but crucial science as we prepare to send people on to the red planet
these four individuals volunteered more than a year ago to dedicate their time to this effort
I'm very appreciative they've been separated from their families placed on a carefully prescribed
meal plan and undergone a lot of observation when they come out give them a big round of
applause I can't wait to see the smile on their faces by growing and harvesting their
own vegetables communicating with a 22 minute delay at sometimes and conducting simulated
Mars walks This Crew has helped us obtained crucial information as we prepare to return
to the moon and on to Mars Mars is our goal AS Global interest and capabilities in space
exploration continue to expand America is poised to lead the completion of CHAPEA mission is an
important step in this goal thank you also to the Cross disciplinary teams that supported these four
I know that these four entered 378 days ago but there was a lot of work that went
into the preparation for this event uh some are in the room here but thank you to the
teams that supported them thank you to all who played a big role in executing this Mission so
you're not here to see me on stage I'd like to invite the deputy director of flight operations
astronaut Kjell Lindgren to the stage to open the door as we greet our four awesome
guys ready to come
out hey congratulations congratulations
awesome do you guys have
masks outstanding
Awesome wow what what an awesome day um it is an absolute privilege to be here to there's a
there yells from outside the building um it is an absolute privilege to be here uh to welcome Kelly,
Nathan, Ross, Anca back home and to and to um to give them our serest sincerest congratulations um
you know I was trying to think of some traditions from my own end of mission experiences to share
with them but they were mostly centered around uh trying not to pass out and become actively sick
so we'll move on from that also mindful of the fact that We Stand between them and reunion with
their families so I will keep my comments short um how many fingerprints does it take to make a
footprint how many millions of uh hours did it take for the legions of Engineers and scientists
uh Fabricators and astronauts how many hands required to lift our rockets and spacecraft and
astronauts into orbit and to generally lower them back to the Earth how many unique contributions
how many fingerprints did it take to put that very first footprint on the lunar surface you
know um the path to Mars is beset with challenges and the crew and their families uh have committed
a year of their lives in service to NASA to the country and to Humanity's exploration of space
and so thank you congratulations and thank you to the crew for um putting your previous
careers on pause for a year and uh committing yourself to research that is going to enable
our future exploration of space uh huge thank you to the families for providing um families
and friends for providing uh support and for the many sacrifices that you've made over the
past year and thank you to the CHAPEA team to the leadership to the partners to the support
team the science team uh for execut for planning and executing an amazing Mission so your service
and sacrifice um are going to make our future deep space exploration successful and um your
fingerprints are going to be an indelible part of those first footprints on Mars so from on behalf
of the flight operations directorate and the astronaut office congratulations and welcome home
and now I'd like to introduce uh the principal investigator for the CHAPEA mission um Grace
Douglas thank you Kjell thank you all for joining us for this Milestone accomplishment
and welcoming our crew back from Mars over the past 378 days Commander Kelly
Haston flight engineer Ross Brockwell medical officer Nathan Jones and science officer Anca
Selariu have dedicated their lives to achieve the objectives the scientists and engineers at
Nasa have set before them enabling us to collect thousands of data points yielding
a unique and valuable integrated data set in a Mars realistic simulation this data will give
us unprecedented insight into how we can best work together to achieve mission objectives
while maintaining health and performance for the success of future human missions
to Mars I want to congratulate all four of you on your tremendous efforts and express
my deepest gratitude to all of you and to your families and friends who have supported these
Endeavors and for the sacrifice all of you have made to contribute to the goals
of human exploration I also want to thank the science engineering and Mission Control teams
who worked collaboratively and tirelessly 24 hours a day through every holiday and
weekend to support our crew to support data integrity and to support Mission success
it has been an honor to work with this crew and with this team and finally I want to thank the
public for their tremendous support for the human Spirit of exploration technological advancement
and discovery that will enable us to set the first boots on Mars I want to now introduce
Judy Hayes the chief science officer for human health and performance who will give remarks next
thank you Grace um and congratulations because this would not have happened without Dr Douglas's
vision and so here we are today after the first mission so first thank you to this
pioneering crew they have volunteered to be the first in the CHAPEA analog and the first of two
more that will follow them also and I and I would Echo what others have said Thank you to the crew
that is behind the scenes the researchers the operations thank you sir those working research
and operations behind the scenes 24 hours a day to support this team here to be able to
be successful so well done the NASA human health and performance uh directorate is responsible for
astronaut health and performance we also do studies to support that our goal here um was
to study the um human system risks associated with exploration human space flight exploration
this CHAPEA experiment has played a huge role as we've heard before in the efforts for conducting
research that improves our understanding of how we're going to treat our crews when we get to
Mars so I won't keep it too long I know there's there's many more important people to say things
so without further Ado I want to hand it over to to our courageous mission one crew uh that
has spent more than a year away from their family and friends to support the efforts
of NASA and with that I'm going to hand it off to Commander Kelly so congratulations welcome
home hello it's actually just so wonderful to be able to say hello to you all um we wish to thank
thank everyone uh for the warm welcome home but also for being here with us today we know many of
you traveled very far to come and and took time out of your lives um not just for today but for
the whole mission and we also thank everyone uh from NASA to po1 has been a unique experience with
great challenges Joys and sorrows and a lot of hard work with a fair bit of fun thrown in as well
I wish to thank the crew my friends and family and my partner Elliot who told me not to Nam drop
him but he deserves it during this Mission these people have given an incredible richness of shared
experience and conversation a gift of love and support that made this year possible I am humbled
that being away on a one-year Mars analog brought me closer to those I was with and those I left
back at home to everyone in particular my family I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you this year and
I thank you all so very much and I extend this thank you to NASA for the opportunity and also
to everyone has worked so hard on the CHAPEA team this tremendous group of people has guided and
supported us throughout this Mission we applaud and thank you for your vision your execution
and bringing the first iteration of CHAPEA to completion what an accomplishment a huge Kudos
and we're so grateful to you all you've taken such good care of us I am so proud and honored
to be part of this crew and project and to be a part of a small incremental uh part of the work
being done here on Earth that will one day enable humans to explore and live on Mars thank you so
much thanks Kelly well I'd like to say thank you to everyone at Nasa and on the CHAPEA team
for the amazing creativity and commitment and for everything you do thanks to my mom and to
Shannon for being so supportive thank you Ryan for saving my life for me while I was away on Mars
and thanks to these crew mates thanks for your knowledge and your skills thanks for
tolerating my experiment in hair science and thank you sincerely for all the good times
we've had throughout this Mission start to finish U I'm very grateful to have had this incredible
opportunity to live for a year within the spirit of planetary Adventure towards an exciting future
and I'm grateful for the chance to live the idea that we must utilize resources no faster
than they can be replenished and produce waste no faster than they can be processed back into
resources we cannot live Dream create or explore on any significant time frame if
we don't live these principles but if we do we can achieve and sustain amazing and inspiring things
like exploring other worlds and we can do these things together we can use our senses of Wonder
and purpose to achieve peace and prosperity and to unlock knowledge and joy for the benefit of
everyone and every part of planet Earth so this has been a wonderful experience and I
really hope this helps us get that much closer to the reality of putting boots on Mars thank
you well I'm just excited to be here and um I've got a million thoughts just kind of racing through
my head right now uh for instance you know wow that went by quickly I really hope I don't cry
standing up here in front of all of you and um as a physician I'm so glad that my life events
led me here instead of being a proctologist I could still change my mind about that I'm
pretty young um you know it's funny I was just telling the uh other crew the other day um that
378 days in I didn't feel thanks Casey my wife's going to make me mess up that other
thing I mentioned there with the cry um but I told crew the other day that at 378 uh days in
I didn't feel like uh you know this could have been any day beyond 10 or at most 11 years since
we came in last June um you know um all that said you know and Jess though it really did uh
just kind of fly by I uh really just appreciate NASA giving me the opportunity to be here today
and um to get to uh show what uh what we could do I appreciate as been mentioned before all of the
CHAPEA team members many who have been here for so many years uh before we signed on and um many
who will still be here whenever we've completed our leg of the journey I also want to thank the
American public uh for continuing to dare to dream uh that uh that uh this Humanity might
go beyond uh Earth um and our next uh giant leap forward I also want to thank This Crew
who has just been amazing I just um really appreciate every every day that I've gotten
to spend with you guys and uh in addition to that um I would be remiss not to uh thank my friends
and family who I couldn't have done this without and finally I want to end with saying to my family
um I love you to Mars and back still oh next up we have Anca Selariu who is the science officer
in case you forgot and I um I am too nervous admittedly
to Freestyle it as I've done at Ingress so I prepared a
Papyrus I've been asked many times why the obsession with Mars why go to Mars because it's
possible because space can unite and bring out the best in us because because it's one defining step
that earthlings will take to light the way into the next centuries ch's presence here as a matter
of fact is symbolic for me I first saw him a few years ago a Colorado State University where he
shared his own story of defying odds and becoming an astronaut his words stay with me ever since
as testimony that only the laws of physics are obstacles to what we can achieve I am astonished
that I got to live at Mars Dune Alpha and that I got to contribute to the one thing that is
dearest to my heart bringing life to Mars no words can express how grateful I am to all who played
a part in me being here my beloved friends and family have always been there when I needed them
and I will always carry them in my heart and in my memory wherever I may go my deepest
gratitude to the Navy a family that I'm most proud to be a part of and serve alongside and
without whose support I would not be here at all I want to thank you the incredible
people of NASA for this once in a lifetime experience your passion your dedication
and courage are an inspiration for an entire planet thank you Kelly Ross and Nate as well
as your loved ones for making this one of the best and most meaningful years of my whole life.
Last but not least to everyone watching dreaming and cheering for space exploration thank you
with this I would like to introduce Julie Kramer White, director of engineering for final remarks.
Good afternoon I will make this very brief because I get what they were really wanting to get to is
to get out to see their families and friends but I want to take a chance to to um mention how how
the development of this analog has been a really unique and fascinating thing for our engineering
teams we're used to designing spacecraft and so this is not our typical sort of day job so it's
been a really interesting and educational opportunity for us to collaborate with the
health and human performance team to create this analog and so from working with Jacobs
and icon for building this up and outfitting it for the team to spend a year in there to creating
the mission content whether it was Mars walks or robotic operations or habitat maintenance
planned and unplanned um the the analoges really are so important to our understanding of what
it's going to take our Insight in into how our assumptions and how our architectures are really
going to work when the plans meet reality so the day-to-day constraints of how the crews have to
operate analoges like this are so important in ways that we can't even imagine when we plan so
executed here on Earth in a way that's more accessible um cost effective and lower risk
for the crews it gives us an opportunity to learn all these critical things about these
complex systems that it's going to make going to Mars and back a lot safer so we I'm not the
first one to say this and I'll say it because we believe it we understand it those of us that
work in human space flight we understand how much the family is sacrifice particularly for
our crew members so we would like to thank the crew and their families and friends for
their invaluable contributions in improving our understanding of living and working on these
extended missions stay tuned for CHAPEA mission 2 which will happen next year and CHAPEA Mission
3 which will happen in 2027 we still have a lot left to learn and we hope you'll join
us on our journey please join me once more in welcoming CHAPEA mission one crew home.