Want to go to Mars? NASA is recruiting. Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA, consists of “simulated one-year Mars surface mission[s]” located right here on Earth, based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The upcoming mission will be the second of three simulations.
CHAPEA mission 1 kicked off in June of 2023 when two female and two male volunteers were sealed up inside a 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat called “Mars Dune Alpha.” The team comprises “Misson Commander” Kelly Haston, a stem cell biologist; “Science Officer” Anca Selariu, a microbiologist; “Medical Officer” Nathan Jones, an emergency medicine physician; and “Flight Engineer” Ross Brockwell, a structural engineer and public works administrator. According to NASA, the habitat “include[s] private crew quarters, a kitchen, and dedicated areas for medical, recreation, fitness, work … and two bathrooms.”
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Over the course of the year, the crew will face “communication delays” and “environmental stressors” and participate in activities ranging from “crop growth, simulated space walks, habitat maintenance, and science experiments.”
With three months remaining in Crew 1’s stint of service, NASA is soliciting four more volunteers for Crew 2. The deadline for applications is Tuesday, April 2, at 5 p.m. EDT. Candidates must be “healthy, motivated U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are non-smokers, 30-55 years old, and proficient in English.” In addition, “[a] master’s degree in a STEM field such as engineering, mathematics, or biological, physical, or computer science … with at least two years of professional STEM experience or a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft is required.”
The official press release that seeks candidates ends with NASA’s DEI/woke tagline:
Under NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration of the Moon, land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all.
Gee — not much room for white males there — at least not American white males.
What started as a disturbing trend has become an achieved goal. The 2013 astronaut class was 50 percent female. The class of 2017 netted 11 astronauts: three “white” males, three “minority” males, three “white” females, and two “minority” females.
In 2020, NASA announced its list of candidates for the Artemis missions: nine male astronauts and nine female astronauts, of which about half are “white,” and the other half “non-white” — a rainbow painted with astro-mathematical precision. The mission, named after the Greek god Apollo’s female twin, was given “artwork” depicting “Woman on the Moon,” and its design is telling: a round medallion portraying “a portrait of the Greek Goddess, Artemis, illustrated in the highlights and shadows of the crescent Moon,” her features squashed and distorted “so that all women can see themselves in her.”
No woman has ever walked on the Moon. With #Artemis, we’re changing that.
This #WorldSpaceWeek, we’re honoring Women in Space with #Artemis “Woman on the Moon” desktop and mobile backgrounds. Download yours: https://t.co/uZGDCBios2. pic.twitter.com/OD566IHS4m
— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) October 5, 2021
NASA Astronaut Group 23 was announced Dec. 6, 2021 — 10 astronaut candidates, 4 women and 6 men (four “non-white”).
Artemis 1 was an uncrewed Moon-orbiting test flight of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that was launched Nov. 16, 2022.
Artemis 2 will be a crewed 10-day Moon-orbiting mission with astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander (white male); Victor Glover, pilot (black male); Christina Koch, mission specialist (white female); and Jeremy Hansen, also mission specialist (Canadian). Wags in the know attribute Wiseman’s presence to his previous stint as chief of the Astronaut Office (they can pretty well name their next assignment). Except for Wiseman, Artemis 2 demographics embody the stated mission of Artemis to land “the first woman, first person of color, and … first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all.”
One would hope that these “Age of Artemis” astronauts, and those who follow, are indeed physically capable and mentally stable team players, unburdened with grievance industry attitude, rainbow elitism, or gender/race privilege. But there are troubling signs that NASA has employed and is indeed accelerating the prioritization of gender and race to achieve “equity” — instead of focusing on the selection of the best qualified, regardless of sex or color.
CHAPEA mission 1’s “science officer,” Selariu, enumerated her experiences at the six-month mark:
Now that we’re halfway through — what do I miss most about Earth? Well, what took me by surprise was how much I miss Earth life, its sounds, its colors. It’s almost a visceral sensation — much like a phantom limb syndrome. I really never thought this was possible. I miss the greenery, I miss seeing insects, hearing a bird. I miss petting a cat. I miss the colorful sky of Earth, its ever-changing weather. I miss the almost infinite library of nature smells.
NASA might have an alibi for Selariu’s seeming unfitness for a year-long mission of privation and relative isolation. Along with aerospace and defense industry engineer Trevor Clark (black male), Selariu was one of two “backup” crew members. When NASA’s primary “science officer,” advanced practice nurse Alyssa Shannon, dropped out for undisclosed reasons, it was Selariu, not Clark, who was selected to fill in. Gender trumped “race,” and Clark lost out.
But when it comes to privation and isolation, the CHAPEA mission 1 has it pretty easy. Crew 1 was delivered to Mars Dune Alpha in a glorified minivan with oversized tires, instead of having to deal with a stress-filled orbital launch followed by seven months of claustrophobic hardship, a white-knuckled descent and landing on Mars, and the inescapable certainty that if things went seriously askew no cavalry was coming to the rescue. They didn’t have to cope with one-third Earth’s gravity and the sobering reality that if their environmental suits failed, or their habitat was compromised, they would die.
On the contrary, Crew 1 approached their new habitat in coveralls and polo shirts, paused at the doorstep to wave at their support crews, and indulged in a “group hug.”
With barely one week before the application deadline, NASA is pulling out all the stops, with Administrator Bill Nelson hitting CNN by videoconference last week, all but begging for qualified candidates. Given NASA’s blatant preference for females, persons of color, and international “guests,” that may increase the chances for white male applicants.
It isn’t just the patent inequality or unfairness of limiting a white male presence in NASA’s astronaut corps. Institutionalizing bias and preferential HR practices does not create a Kumbaya community of rainbow brothers and sisters reveling in harmony and unity in space. Such intolerance cultivates imposter-syndrome feelings of inadequacy among the equity-hired and resentment among the you’re-just-lucky-to-be-here “allies.”
It’s a lose-lose scenario. White males who accept a collective guilt of being “historically privileged” are burdened with a sense of unworthiness. Those who “go along to get along” or feel obliged to fake their way through the indoctrination and screening processes must suppress feelings of outrage, injustice, and oppression that are likely to rise to the surface under stress.
These are not dynamics that auger well for long duration missions under the oppressive confinement inherent in either simulated or real Martian habitats. “I miss petting a cat,” indeed.
So, does it matter that NASA feels obliged to gamble on the mental stability and lack of physicality of its candidates just to enhance the optics of “inclusion?”
Yes. Yes, it does.
