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profiles in courage essay contest past winners

John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

profiles in courage essay contest past winners

One thing that quickly becomes apparent to high school students preparing for college is the burden of funding a four-year degree. Fortunately for college-bound students, there are numerous ways to reduce the cost of school. One of the most notable methods is pursuing a wide range of scholarships and awards. An award that students with exceptional writing and researching skills should consider is the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest.

About the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

In 1954, John F. Kennedy took a leave of absence from the Senate to recover from back surgery. Kennedy used that time to study the topic of political courage, which inspired him to later write the Pulitzer-Prize winning book Profiles in Courage —detailing the careers of eight Senators whom Kennedy believed demonstrated enormous courage when faced with pressure from their parties and constituents.  

Today, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest asks students to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps by researching and writing a creative original essay about an elected official who risked their career to take a stand on moral principles. The essay contest serves as a companion project to the Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in Courage Award, which honors elected officials who have demonstrated incredible political courage.

The winner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest receives a $10,000 cash award and is invited to accept their prize at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts during the Profile in Courage Award events—with all travel and lodging expenses paid for. In addition to the award winner, the runner-up will receive a $3,000 award, the five finalists each receive $1,000 awards, and the eight semi-finalists are awarded $100 each.

In addition to the winners, ten students are selected for honorable mention and all participants receive a certificate of participation.

John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest Applicant Requirements

The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest is available to U.S. high school students in grades nine through twelve. Students need to be enrolled in a public, private, parochial, or homeschool high school program in one of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., or a U.S. territory. The contest also accepts submissions from U.S. citizens attending school overseas.

How to Apply

In order to participate in the Profile of Courage Essay Contest, students need to be recommended by a teacher who will support and advise the student in the creation of their essay. Nominating teachers can be former or current teachers of the applicant, but must still be still teaching at the school the participant is enrolled in. Rarely, an exception may be made if a student is unable to be nominated by a teacher from their school. For applicants who are homeschooled, the parent or legal guardian can fill the role of a nominating teacher.

An applicant’s essay is required to describe an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official on the local, state, or national level who served between 1917 (the year of Kennedy’s birth) and the present. Essays need to be an original work of the applicant and fall between 700 and 1,000 words—citations and bibliography do not count toward the word count. Additionally, applicants should cite a minimum of five sources.

John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy, along with the senators featured in Profiles of Courage are not eligible subjects for essays. It’s also recommended to avoid writing about present or past presidents of the United States.

Past winners of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest are not eligible to participate again. Employees of John Hancock Financial Services and their family members are also ineligible for the award.

Tips on Applying For Awards

Don’t Miss Deadlines: Pay close attention to deadlines and don’t wait until the last minute to submit your essay. The Profile in Courage Essay can be submitted via email or traditional mail. If you decide to submit your materials via traditional mail, the application must be postmarked on its due date.

Follow Directions: The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest has specific rules about how many words are allowed, sources needed, what information needs to be included, and how sources should be cited. It would be extremely disappointing to write a winning essay only to be disqualified because you made a mistake like forgetting to include a bibliography.

Proofread: Applicants for the Profile in Courage Essay Contest should work closely with their nominating teacher to ensure that they submit a clean essay free of grammatical, typographical, and spelling errors, along with making sure the essay flows and meets the submission requirements.

Research: In addition to researching for their essay, applicants should research past winners to get an understanding of what a winning essay looks like. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum maintains a list of winners and their essays on their website .  

Professional Appearance: When applying for any distinguished award, there’s a chance that your social media profiles will be looked at. Audit your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles and delete any content that could be potentially damaging. While you’re at it, make sure you have a professional-looking email address to correspond with.

Get Professional Help: CollegeVine helps students win awards. Our expert advisors can provide whatever assistance a student needs, whether it’s staying ahead of deadlines or crafting an exceptional essay.

Curious about your chances of acceptance to your dream school? Our free chancing engine takes into account your GPA, test scores, extracurriculars, and other data to predict your odds of acceptance at over 500 colleges across the U.S. We’ll also let you know how you stack up against other applicants and how you can improve your profile. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to get started!

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profiles in courage essay contest past winners

profiles in courage essay contest past winners

John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

Ages: High School

Type: Submission

Scope: National

[email protected]

Participate

In  Profiles in Courage , John F. Kennedy recounted the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers to do what was right for the nation. These leaders demonstrated political courage by taking a stand for the public good in spite of pressure by interest groups, their political party, or even their constituents. The Profile in Courage Essay Contest challenges students to write an original and creative essay that demonstrates an understanding of  political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in  Profiles in Courage .

There are no news items for this competition at this time.

Describe and analyze an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after  1917 , the year John F. Kennedy was born. Include an analysis of the obstacles, risks, and consequences associated with the act. The essay may concern an issue at the local, state, national, or international level. The maximum word count is 1,000 with a minimum of 700, not including citations and bibliography. Use at least five varied sources such as government documents, letters, newspaper articles, books, and/or personal interviews. All submissions must adhere to  contest requirements .

Content (55%)

Demonstrated understanding of political courage.

  • Demonstrated an understanding of political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in  Profiles in Courage
  • Identified an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917.
  • Proved that the elected official risked his or her career to address an issue at the local, state, national, or international level
  • Explained why the official's course of action best serves or has served the larger public interest
  • Outlined the obstacles, dangers, and pressures the elected official is encountering or has encountered

 Originality

  • Thoughtful, original choice of a U.S. elected official
  • Story is not widely known, or a well-known story is portrayed in a unique way

Supporting Evidence

  • Well-researched
  • Convincing arguments supported with specific examples
  • Critical analysis of acts of political courage

Source Material

  • Bibliography of five or more varied sources
  • Includes primary source material
  • Thoughtfully selected, reliable

Presentation (45%)

Quality of writing.

  • Style, clarity, flow, vocabulary

Organization

  • Structure, paragraphing, introduction and conclusion

Conventions

  • Syntax, grammar, spelling, and punctuation

Website: https://www.jfklibrary.org/Education/Profile-in-Courage-Essay-Contest/

Managing Organization: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Contact: [email protected]

Eligibility: The contest is open to United States high school students in grades nine through twelve attending public, private, parochial, or home schools; U.S. students under the age of twenty enrolled in a high school correspondence/GED program in any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, or the U.S. territories; and U.S. citizens attending schools overseas. Past winners and finalists are not eligible to participate. Employees of John Hancock Financial Services and members of their families are not eligible to participate. All students must list the name of their nominating teacher on the registration form. The role of a nominating teacher is to provide students with support and advice during the writing of their essay.

Registration Opens: September 1, 2019

Registration Closes: January 18, 2020

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John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

  • Last modified 2023-10-25
  • Published on 2022-11-14

Competition Details

Introduction : In Profile in Courage, John F. Kennedy tells the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers to do the right thing for their country. These leaders demonstrated political courage by standing up for the public good despite pressure from interest groups, their political parties, and even their constituents. The JFK Courage Essay Contest asks students to write an original and creative essay demonstrating an understanding of the political courage described in John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.

Competition Topic : Describes and analyzes an act of political courage by an American elected official who served during or after 1917. Includes an analysis of the obstacles, risks, and consequences associated with the act. Essays may address local, state, national, or international issues. Because originality is a criteria for review, students are strongly encouraged to present officials in their town, state or region, or leaders who have addressed issues of concern to them.

Competition Requirement : Word count is a maximum of 1,000 and a minimum of 700, excluding citations and bibliography; Use at least five different sources, such as government documents, letters, newspaper articles, books, and personal interviews.

Recognition and Awards : First place – $10,000, Second place – $3,000, Five Finalists – $1,000 each, and 8 Semi-finalists – $100 each

Competition Website : LINK

Other Writing Contest you may be interested in : Guide to YoungArts Writing Competition

Eligibility

The contest is open to United States high school students in grades 9 through 12 attending public, private, parochial, or home schools; U.S. students under the age of twenty enrolled in a high school correspondence/GED program in any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, or the U.S. territories; and U.S. citizens attending schools overseas. Past winners and finalists are not eligible to participate. Employees of John Hancock Financial Services and members of their families are not eligible to participate.

Submission deadline

January 12, 2024

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Education Updates

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Profile in Courage Essay Contest

Today’s post comes from Esther Kohn, education specialist at the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

Profiles in Courage Paperback Edition

In his 1956 book Profiles in Courage , John F. Kennedy recounted the stories of eight U.S. senators who faced dire consequences for standing up for the public good. Ostracized, rejected by voters, and even physically attacked, the elected officials in Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize-winning book put politics aside to do what they believed was right for the country.

A “Profile in Courage” essay is a carefully researched recounting of a story: the story of how an elected official risked his or her career to take a stand based on the dictates of the public good, rather than the dictates of polls, interest groups, or even constituents. The contest challenges high school students to discover new “profiles in courage,” and to research and write about acts of political courage that occurred after the 1956 publication of Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage .

The Profile in Courage Essay Contest requires young people today to grapple with big ideas:  How did Kennedy define political courage ? Which public figures have demonstrated political courage? Which local, state, and national elected officials have risked their careers to take a stand for what is right?

Visit the John F. Kennedy Library website for contest information, eligibility and requirements, prize information, judging criteria, curriculum ideas, past winning essays, and more.

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4 thoughts on “ profile in courage essay contest ”.

Can GED students participate? What an amazing opportunity! Thank you, GED IN FL

Yes, GED students under the age of twenty are eligible. For more information on eligibility please visit: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education/Profile-in-Courage-Essay-Contest/Eligibility-and-Requirements.aspx

Will you have a contest for adults? I’m 28. Jfk is my hero.

We’re happy to hear of your interest! We do not offer a contest for adults but you are welcome to submit a nomination for the Profile in Courage Award.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Events-and-Awards/Profile-in-Courage-Award/How-to-Submit-a-Nomination.aspx

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Winning the Profile in Courage Essay Contest - 10 Tips to Help You Win

Are you interested in politics? Do you like learning about heroes of the past? Do you enjoy writing or are you looking to strengthen your writing skills? Are you competitive or interested in winning $10,000 and a trip to Boston? Are you seeking an effective and creative way to strengthen your resume and college application?

Then take a look at the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest.

Essay contests can be a solid way to boost your academic profile while simultaneously improving your writing skills and learning more about a topic of interest. Having seen notable winners such as Pete Buttigieg, this recognized writing contest provides a great way for you to showcase your writing skills and initiative. In this blog post, we introduce the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest, the benefits of participating in writing contests, the logistics of the contest, and some tips to help you win!

Why should you participate in writing contests as a high school student?

Before we introduce the specifics of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest, it is important to review the benefits of participating in writing competitions as a potential college applicant.

As is with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest, writing competitions usually involve a topic related to real-world issues. The opportunity to write about these topics provides you a way to demonstrate to colleges and universities that you are socially aware and engaged with relevant topics.

Outside of the topic itself, participating in a writing competition is a unique addition to your application. It expresses to college admissions that you have an array of interests and talents and take initiative on your own time to pursue them.

Critical thinking and research skills are important assets to have in the college environment . Conducting in-depth research for the writing competition will allow you to refine these skills as well as convey to college admissions that you know how to conduct independent research.

Although participating in the competition is already a nice addition to your resume, winning or placing in a notable essay competition is a remarkable achievement that will further distinguish you from other applicants.

What is the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest?

In 1957, John F. Kennedy wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage.” “Profiles in Courage” details the stories of eight United States senators who displayed courage by taking a moral stance on issues. The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest, following the theme of “Profiles in Courage”, asks students to explore the topic of political courage and write an essay on an elected official who served during or after 1917, the year John F. Kennedy was born, and displayed these traits.

Is it Prestigious?

With notable former winners and almost $30,000 in cash prizes, this essay contest is sure to make an impressive mark on your resume. Additionally, the winner is invited to the 2024 Profile in Courage Award event at the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation where they will be able to share space with important figures. Past winners of the Profile in Courage Award include former U.S. presidents such as Barack Obama and George H.W. Bush.

Important Dates and Deadlines

Opens Sep 1, 2023, 12:00 AM (EDT)

Deadline for registration form submission AND essay - January 12, 2024, at 11:59 PM (EST)

Results release date - April 20th, 2024

Winners will be notified by telephone and email

All participants will receive a letter containing the list of winners as well as a Certificate of Participation by the end of May

Who is Eligible to Participate?

The contest is open to United States high school students in grades nine through twelve attending public, private, parochial, or home schools

U.S. students under the age of twenty enrolled in a high school correspondence/GED program in any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, or the U.S. territories are eligible.

U.S. citizens attending schools overseas can also participate

Past winners and finalists are not eligible to participate

What do Winners Receive?

The contest awards its winners with hefty cash prizes up to $10,000, as well as a fully-funded trip to Boston with their family and teacher at the Profile in Courage Award ceremony. Every participant, regardless of the outcome, will receive a Certificate of Participation. Additionally, there are no other costs associated with the contest that you will have to bear as a participant.

How do I Nominate a Teacher?

The contest requires you to have a nominating teacher. The role of the nominating teacher is to provide you with guidance and support while you are writing your essay. Additionally, they must review your essay to make sure it is free of errors and matches all conventions

The winner and their nominating teacher will receive awards at the annual Profile in Courage Award ceremony held each May at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston (in case you need to incentivize your teacher). Your nominating teacher can be a former or current teacher but must still teach at your current school ( If you are home-schooled, your instructor can be your nominating teacher)

What are the judging criteria?

For a full breakdown of judging criteria, please make sure to visit the official website . Here is a brief overview of how the essays are judged.

55% of your final score is based on the content of your essay

Demonstrated understanding of political courage

Originality

Supporting Evidence

Source Material

45% of your final score is based on presentation

Quality of writing

Organization (structure, paragraphing, introduction, and conclusion)

Conventions (syntax, grammar, spelling, and punctuation)

What are Some Details About the Essay that I Should Keep in Mind?

The essay should review an act of political courage performed by a U.S. elected official who served after 1917

In the spirit of “Profiles in Courage”, acts of political courage are characterized as times when elected officials went against the grain and risked their careers to take a moral stance.

Essay Requirements

Length - between 700 - 1,000 words (excluding citations and bibliography)

Number of sources - a minimum of five sources

Sources can be government documents, letters, newspaper articles, books, and even personal interviews

Essays must include a bibliography

Accepted formats include APA, MLA, or Turabian

Please make sure to review their official guidelines

10 Tips to Help You Win

Originality (Avoid writing about very common officials) A large part of their judging criteria is originality. The judges are looking for essays that stand out and offer fresh perspectives. Specifically, they are looking for essays that have an original choice of a U.S. elected official whose story is not widely known. If you choose a well-known official, it is important to provide a unique, fresh perspective on their story. Ideally, they recommend choosing a local official such as a city councilor or school board official. They have even provided a list of officials to avoid writing about. To get an idea of what kind of stories previously won, visit this page .

Have an Understanding of Political Courage Ensure you thoroughly comprehend the concept of political courage, as defined in "Profiles in Courage." Your essay should highlight situations where elected officials took a moral stand, even if it risked their careers. This understanding is important in demonstrating the elected official's bravery. One way to gain a deep understanding of political courage would be to read “Profiles in Courage” or the chapter summaries .

Conduct Extensive Research and Diversify Your Sources The guidelines require at least 5 sources, but when selecting sources, do not strive to just satisfy the minimum requirement. Find sources that help drive your story and emphasize the specific act of political courage. Choosing a diverse set of sources from different mediums can help keep your story interesting and really bring it to life. Additionally, make sure to properly cite your sources.

Write Clearly and in an Engaging Manner The bare minimum is to make sure you are using proper syntax and conventions. Not satisfying this will make it hard for the judges to read. Additionally, make sure you make it natural for the judges to read. It should be fluid and concise to allow them to really be drawn into your story. To check your writing, try methods like reading it out loud to avoid long sentences.

Work Closely with your Nominating Teacher Your nominating teacher can be a great resource to help with every step of the process. Make sure you pick a teacher that you have a good relationship with and is knowledgeable on the subject. This way they will be able to help you with everything from finding sources to making sure the essay is well-written and engaging. Additionally, make sure to thank your teacher (they are taking the time to help you)!

Stay Focused on the Act of Political Courage This contest is about highlighting specific acts of political courage by elected officials. You only have 700 - 1,000 words to tell your story. You should make sure you are dedicating this space to highlighting this elected official's act of political courage rather than turning your essay into a comprehensive biography of the official. Background information is good, but you should concentrate on the relevant background information and the key moment where they displayed political courage and explore the context, consequences, and significance of that act.

Seek Feedback and Revise Throughout the Process Before submitting your essay, make sure to constantly proofread and revise (do not just wait to do this for the final draft). Ask your nominating teacher, friends, and family for feedback consistently throughout the process. This way you will be able to get a diverse range of perspectives and identify areas of improvement throughout the process.

Interview The Elected Official or Their Peers/Family As previously mentioned, since the judges are looking for originality, it is a good idea to consider writing about a local elected official. Having sufficient sources is necessary, but interviewing the local elected official, their family, or their peers can be an effective way to add a unique element to your story. This extra dimension will make your essay more engaging and show the judges and college admissions board you are dedicated to your work.

Craft a Captivating (and Natural) Introduction The judges will be reading many essays, so it is important to make sure you grab their attention from the beginning. Your introduction should make the reader want to continue reading as well as set the stage for the rest of your essay. You can employ classic introduction techniques such as using an intriguing anecdote, a thought-provoking quote, or a compelling question related to political courage. It is important to make it sound natural as well. Sometimes when using one of these techniques to “grab the reader’s attention”, the introduction can sound somewhat contrived. Make sure you strike a balance between engaging the reader and staying true to your tone and topic.

Conclude with an Impact Finally, it is important to conclude with something that will round off your essay well, drive your story home, and give the judges something to think about. Again, they will be reading many essays, so an impactful conclusion is an effective way to leave a lasting impression on the judges. Make sure to summarize the significance of the elected official's act of political courage and the impact it had. You can also connect it to broader themes or contemporary issues.

One more option - Lumiere Research Scholar Program

If you’re looking for the opportunity to do in-depth research on various topics in literature or linguistics, you could also consider applying to one of the Lumiere Research Scholar Programs , selective online high school programs for students I founded with researchers at Harvard and Oxford. Last year, we had over 4000 students apply for 500 spots in the program! You can find the application form here.

Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.

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Profile in Courage High School Awards

Scholarship sponsored by john f. kennedy library foundation.

In Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy recounted the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers to do what was right for the nation. These leaders demonstrated political courage by taking a stand for the public good in spite of pressure by interest groups, their political party, or even their constituents. The Profile in Courage Essay Contest challenges students to write an original and creative essay that demonstrates an understanding of political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage.

Contest Topic

Describe and analyze an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917, the year John F. Kennedy was born. Include an analysis of the obstacles, risks, and consequences associated with the act. The essay may concern an issue at the local, state, national, or international level.

Since originality is one of the criteria for judging, we strongly encourage students to profile an official in their town, state or region, or a leader who has addressed an issue of great concern to them. We advise students to avoid selecting a common essay subject. 

Eligibility

The contest is open to United States high school students in grades nine through twelve attending public, private, parochial, or home schools; U.S. students under the age of twenty enrolled in a high school correspondence/GED program in any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, or the U.S. territories; and U.S. citizens attending schools overseas. Past winners and finalists are not eligible to participate. Employees of John Hancock Financial Services and members of their families are not eligible to participate.

Requirements

  • The contest deadline is January 12, 2024 at 11:59 PM (EST).
  • Essays can be no more than 1,000 words but must be a minimum of 700 words. Citations and bibliography are not included in the word count.
  • Essays must be the original work of the student.
  • Essays must have a minimum of five sources.

Essay Subjects

  • Essays must describe an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917, the year John F. Kennedy was born. The official may have addressed an issue at the local, state, or national level. See Contest Topic and Information and Helpful Tips for Writing Your Essay for more information.
  • Since originality is one of the criteria for judging, writing about any of these common essay subjects will lower your score.
  • John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy are not eligible subjects for essays.
  • Essays about past recipients of the Profile in Courage Award will be disqualified unless they describe an act of political courage other than the act for which the award was given.
  • Essays about the senators in Profiles in Courage will be disqualified.
  • Participants are strongly discouraged from profiling the most written about essay subjects. Be sure to check this list of common essay subjects before you select your topic.

Source Material

  • Essays with fewer than five listed sources will be disqualified.
  • All participants must cite sources they used to research their topic throughout their essay. Please use parenthetical citations within the text. We can not accept citations in footnote form.
  • Essays must include a bibliography. Accepted formats include APA, MLA, or Turabian. You must use a minimum of five selected sources. Please refer to Guidelines for Citations and Bibliographies.

Nominating Teachers

  • All students must list the name of their nominating teacher on the registration form. The role of a nominating teacher is to provide students with support and advice during the writing of their essay. Nominating teachers are also asked to read students' essays to make suggestions for improvement before they are submitted to the essay contest. As part of this review process, the nominating teacher reviews the essay for syntax, grammatical, typographical and spelling errors and ensures the essay meets the contest requirements listed above. The first place winner and his/her nominating teacher, as representatives of their school, will be invited to receive awards at the annual Profile in Courage Award ceremony held each May at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
  • Nominating teachers can be former or current teachers, but must still be teaching at the same high school as the essay participant. Usually students ask their English or History/Social Studies teachers. In very few cases, we will make an exception if a student is unable to ask a teacher from their high school to be their nominating teacher. The parent or legal guardian responsible for the instruction of home schooled students can also serve as a nominating teacher.

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By Nathaniel Rich

  • Feb. 25, 2024 Updated 10:18 a.m. ET

Alyssa Shannon was on her morning commute from Oakland to Sacramento, where she worked as an advanced-practice nurse at the university hospital, when NASA called to tell her that she had been selected for a Mars mission. She screamed and pulled off the highway. As soon as she hung up, she called her partner, an information-security operations manager at the University of California, Berkeley, named Jake Harwood.

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“Wow,” Harwood said.

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “Wow.”

They sat in silence with the information, struggling to fathom the shape and weight of it, for a very long time.

Later that morning, Nathan Jones, an emergency-room physician in Springfield, Ill., received the call that he had so fervently awaited and so deeply dreaded. His thoughts turned immediately to his wife, Kacie, and their three sons, who were 8, 10 and 12. You get only 18 years with your kids, he told himself. If you accept this opportunity, you’ll have to give up one of them.

And yet ... he couldn’t possibly turn down NASA. Mars, he had convinced himself, was his destiny. As a child, he dreamed of walking across an alien planet in a state of wonder; he hoped to attend space camp, but his family couldn’t afford it. Once his sons were old enough, he took them to Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch.

When he told Kacie the news, she nearly burst into tears.

This Mars mission, CHAPEA, would not actually go to Mars. But the success of CHAPEA (“Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog”) will hang on the precision with which it simulates the first human expedition to Mars — an eventuality that NASA expects to occur by 2040.

That people will travel to Mars, and soon, is a widely accepted conviction within NASA. The target date for the initial human mission has drifted slightly — in a 2018 report commissioned by Congress, NASA estimated that the first human beings would land on Mars “no later than the late 2020s” — but the certainty has not wavered, even if technical hurdles remain. Rachel McCauley, until recently the acting deputy director of NASA’s Mars campaign, had, as of July, a punch list of 800 problems that must be solved before the first human mission launches. Many of these concern the mechanical difficulties of transporting people to a planet that is never closer than 33.9 million miles away; keeping them alive on poisonous soil in unbreathable air, bombarded by solar radiation and galactic cosmic rays, without access to immediate communication; and returning them safely to Earth, more than a year and half later. Many other problems involve technical details so arcane that McCauley wouldn’t even know how to begin explaining them to a well-intentioned journalist lacking an advanced engineering degree. But McCauley does not doubt that NASA will overcome these challenges. What NASA does not yet know — what nobody can know — is whether humanity can overcome the psychological torment of Martian life.

Enter CHAPEA. Instead of asking questions about aeroshell sensor design and terrain-relative navigation, it promised to ask questions about people. For 378 days, four ordinary people would enact, as closely as possible, the lives of Martian colonists, receiving directives, feedback and near-total surveillance from mission control. They would eat astronaut food, conduct basic experiments, perform maintenance duties, respond to endless surveys and enjoy highly structured down time. This level of extreme verisimilitude is necessary to ensure that the experiment accurately determines whether human beings can thrive while living millions of miles from everybody they’ve ever known.

Experimenters wanted to learn whether crew members could eat low-salt, prepackaged astronaut meals for hundreds of days without losing their appetite, weight and positive attitude. Whether they could live in harmony with strangers in a confined space. Whether they could preserve a cohesive professional environment when they are out of contact with Earth for as long as three weeks at a time. Such questions are of paramount importance, because no mission to Mars can succeed if its inhabitants cannot maintain their health, their happiness and, most critical of all, their sanity.

And so before NASA can safely judge whether astronauts will thrive on Mars, NASA must first determine whether astronaut-imitators can thrive on a stage set designed, with maximum fidelity, to look like Mars.

“Mars is calling!” began the announcement that NASA published on its website in August 2021. Unlike most NASA missions, CHAPEA was open to the general public, or at least a reasonably broad swath of it: citizens or permanent residents between the ages of 30 and 55 with a master’s degree in a STEM field. Applicants were told to expect the experience to be “mentally demanding.”

Among the not-insignificant percentage of the country that idolizes NASA, this news was tantamount to learning that Willy Wonka would open his mysterious factory to five lucky contest winners. NASA offered four golden tickets to Mars — or rather Mars Dune Alpha, a 1,700-square-foot habitat built inside a warehouse at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The habitat was constructed as future Mars dwellings will be constructed: by 3-D printer. For “ink,” Martian colonies will use Martian regolith. Because NASA does not possess sufficient quantities of Martian rock, CHAPEA used a proprietary, airtight cement-based material called Lavacrete, which extrudes from a 3-D printer layer by layer, like orange toothpaste. (Though Lavacrete can be printed in any color, NASA engineers chose to dye the habitat that peculiar hue of orange misleadingly called “Martian red.”)

At one end of the rectangular habitat, four identical 6-by-11-foot cells serve as bedrooms. In the middle lies the “lounge,” a small room with a television and four reclining chairs. The other end is occupied by several desks with computer monitors, a medical station and a crop garden. The vegetables are not intended for subsistence but for mental health: Growing plants, one CHAPEA researcher said, may “provide psychological benefits for astronauts living in isolated, confined environments away from Earth.” Rooms have different ceiling heights, in order, according to its builder, to “avoid spatial monotony and crew member fatigue.” A hatch opens to a Martian backyard: a tented sandbox of reddish sand and two treadmills, to be used for “spacewalks” by virtual-reality-goggled crew members. The walls of the backyard are painted with a mural of Martian cliffs. There are no windows.

The duration of the experiment is the most glaring violation of verisimilitude. Orbital geometries dictate that the shortest possible round-trip mission to Mars will last about 570 days, a scenario possible once every 15 years, next in 2033; a typical Martian tour of duty will last at least 800 days.

To preserve the integrity of the experiment, NASA has refused to disclose any additional details about what the crew will experience during their 378-day confinement, which will end on July 6, 2024. NASA has emphasized only that participants will experience “resource limitations, equipment failure, communication delays and other environmental stressors.” But if Alyssa Shannon and Nathan Jones were to take NASA at its word about its dedication to realism, they could assume that certain conditions would have to be present. Crew members on a mission to Mars will, for instance, have to form durable emotional bonds with total strangers, relying on them for the comforts and consolations of the relationships they abandoned on Earth. Crew members will have to respond to every emergency themselves, without the possibility of intervention, or even guidance, from a mission command too distant to reply promptly to an S.O.S. They would have to come to terms with their inability to care for a sick child, comfort an upset spouse or visit a dying parent.

Future Mars voyagers will not only have to tolerate these conditions. In order to win the privilege of long-distance space travel, they will have to pursue the opportunity with devout, single-minded purpose. They will have to want to travel to Mars more than almost anyone else in the world. They will have to embrace the knowledge that, for at least 570 days, they will be the most isolated human beings in the history of the universe.

An illustration of astronauts in the reflection of one astronaut’s visor.

Alyssa Shannon had fantasized about colonizing Mars since childhood. She spent weeks on the floor of her bedroom playing with a Lego spaceship that converted into a Martian base station. Later she read Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles,” James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy — any Martian sci-fi she could find. She knew she could tolerate hardship and extended periods in isolation: She was an avid backpacker, having hiked the John Muir Trail in 23 days and trekked across Spain in 40. She would miss cooking — her specialty was whole-wheat sourdough pizza — but she was willing to sacrifice her culinary passion in service of humanity’s future. Her partner, Jake, understood. Her decision to apply, he said, “reaffirmed what I knew about her: When it comes time to do something important, requiring a major commitment, she’s the kind of person who will follow through.” While she waited to hear back from NASA, Alyssa didn’t discuss it much: The prospect was almost too exciting to bear.

Nathan Jones, the father of three, told his identical twin, Matthew, that he felt the mission had been designed for him — and that he had been made for the mission. Matthew agreed. Nathan could talk to anyone and seemed to solve any problem he faced. He had spent years as a night-shift paramedic, saving lives in the backs of speeding ambulances. He had volunteered on medical missions in the jungles of Honduras, treating health emergencies for members of remote Indigenous tribes without being able to speak their language (or, for that matter, much Spanish). Jones was the emergency specialist in his household too, responsible for repairing every leak, dysfunctional appliance and clogged toilet. He figured he could handle Mars — or, at least, “Mars.”

Kacie, his wife, wasn’t certain she could handle it. When Nathan announced that he had applied, she was dumbfounded. Why, she asked, would you choose to leave our family for a year?

Another version of this question was posed by various professional observers of the American space program: the historians, ethicists and NASA consultants who spend much of their professional lives imagining the future of space exploration and planetary colonization. What, they wondered, did NASA hope to learn from CHAPEA that it did not know already?

The psychic perils of separation from one’s social world are well understood. “Don’t we already know what isolation does to people?” asks J.S. Johnson-Schwartz, a professor of philosophy at Wichita State University who studies the ethics of space exploration. “What uncertainty exists about what’s going to happen when you lock people inside a room for a year? Just because the room is painted to look like Mars doesn’t mean it’s going to change the results.”

The findings to which Johnson-Schwartz referred were from the last 80 years of isolation research, a field of study initiated during World War II, when the British Royal Air Force grew concerned about pilots’ performance during solo reconnaissance flights. Officers noticed that the longer a pilot stayed in the air, the fewer German submarines he detected. The psychologist Norman Mackworth determined that the monotony of the mission was responsible. But inattention wasn’t the worst of it: Monotony weakened the pilots’ competence in even the most basic tasks.

Mackworth’s conclusions inspired a series of studies by the psychologist Donald O. Hebb at McGill University in Montreal, in which male students earned $20 a day to lie on a bed in a lighted, soundproofed gray cubicle. Hebb confirmed Mackworth’s findings and added a disturbing new wrinkle. Monotony didn’t only cause intellectual impairment. It led to “change of attitude.”

At first Hebb’s students slept a lot and ruminated on their studies and their personal problems. Later they fell into reminiscences, recreating movies they had watched or trips they had taken. Some counted to incredibly large numbers. Eventually, however, they lost the ability to focus. Several students reported “blank periods” during which they did not have a single thought.

Next came the hallucinations: a procession of marching squirrels hauling sacks over their shoulders. Nude women frolicking in a woodland pool. Giant eyeglasses marching down a street. An old man wearing a battle helmet in a bathtub rolling across a field on rubber wheels. Dogs, endless dogs. One student complained of a phantom “sucking my mind out through my eyes.” The delusions made the students vulnerable to manipulation. When played recordings about ghosts, poltergeists and ESP, they were far more likely to believe such phenomena were real, even long after the experiment ended.

Hebb’s findings inspired a boom of isolation studies. Subjects were confined within iron lungs, water tanks and subterranean caves; the results were consistent. “These experiments were extremely useful to many different people,” says Jeffrey Mathias, a historian of science at Cornell University, who is writing a book about the history of isolation research. Besides attracting neuroscientists and psychologists, the research also drew the interest, and funding, of the U.S. intelligence community. The C.I.A. incorporated findings into their practice of “coercive counterintelligence interrogation,” or what today might be called “brainwashing” or “torture.”

The isolation studies were also closely monitored by the Air Force, which directed the nascent U.S. space program before the creation of NASA in 1958. Worried that spaceflight might drive astronauts insane, the Air Force conducted the first iteration of a CHAPEA-like experiment at the Air Force’s School of Aeronautic Medicine in San Antonio in 1955. Prospective astronauts were enclosed for a week within a spaceship cockpit slightly larger than a coffin perpetually illuminated by bright fluorescent lights. The airmen were assigned an overwhelming number of technical tasks and, in some cases, given huge doses of amphetamines.

Their experience followed a familiar trajectory: Initial high spirits gave way to what one researcher called a “gradual increase in irritability,” which abruptly flipped into “frank hostility.” Many participants, including a few who hadn’t taken speed, hallucinated. One pilot saw “little people” perched on the instrument panel. “I can’t say if I thought they were alive or not,” he said. “I really don’t know.” Another pilot abandoned the experiment after three hours and demanded psychiatric care.

Similar studies followed — in blackened anechoic chambers and pill-shaped capsules dangling from high-altitude balloons — before the entire line of inquiry was put to rest by Project Mercury. During the successful solo missions that marked the formal start of the American space program in the early 1960s, astronauts did not suffer from any obvious psychological distress, placating Hebb’s researchers. All future long-duration expeditions remained in Earth’s orbit, allowing crew to communicate easily with family and friends; the International Space Station flies about as far from Earth as Manhattan is from Washington. Although government agencies, particularly those concerned about crew performance aboard nuclear submarines, continue to examine the effects of isolation, NASA did not.

NASA had not solved the problem of isolation in outer space. It realized it did not need to solve it. At least not until half a century later, when a new challenge presented itself: a human mission to a planet so distant that a cry for help would have to travel through the solar system for 22 minutes before it was heard.

It was the lag in communication that particularly worried the partners and families of the CHAPEA crew. All contact with the habitat would be delayed by the amount of time that it would take to beam information hundreds of millions of miles from Earth to Mars. Even the tersest exchange (“How’s it going?” “OK.”) would take 44 minutes.

But 44 minutes was the best-case scenario, because any communication will have to flow through a single node. Every unit of information — not just messages but surveillance footage, audio recordings, experimental and biostatic records — will have to wait its turn in a digital queue, with precedence given to the most urgent signals and the smallest packets of data. The upshot was that anything approaching a normal human conversation with an Earthling was unthinkable. The most modest digital postcard — a short, grainy video of a child blowing out a birthday candle — might take weeks to arrive. And during one three-week period in the middle of the experiment, representing the farthest distance (more than 250 million miles) between the two planets, there would be no contact at all.

Alyssa Shannon’s partner, Jake, the cybersecurity expert, dedicated himself to gaming the digital traffic snarl. “I have to figure out how to make sure my stuff goes faster than everyone else,” he said. “I know enough about tech to get the lowest bit rate possible. The lowest-grade image quality will travel faster. Black and white instead of color. I need to calculate the smallest transmittable unit that’s still me, smiling.”

Nathan Jones emphasized to NASA’s experimenters that he wanted to be kept as busy as possible. He didn’t want too much idle time to worry about his wife and their sons — how, when they were having tough days, he wouldn’t be able to give them “Dad hugs.” He didn’t want to dwell on the lost band performances, piano recitals, cross-country meets and soccer games, or about how his oldest son might be six inches taller by the end of his Martian sojourn. Nor did he care to consider what his friends in central Illinois, who responded to the news of his mission with bafflement and concern, might think. “That’s been the hardest part,” he said. “Their jaws hit the floor. They ask Kacie: ‘Why would you let your husband do this? How are you going to be OK?’ This looks crazy to a lot of people. Maybe it is. It’s not the kind of thing folks around here do.”

Kacie alternated among feelings of anger, fear, grief, defeatism, pride and resolve. There were times when she told Nathan that he shouldn’t go or that she wouldn’t let him go. “As a mother,” she said, “I don’t know that I could even consider leaving my children for a year.” But ultimately she was won over by his enthusiasm.

In the months before the crew was sealed within the habitat — the moment of “ingress,” NASA called it — Nathan threw himself into an extensive “Honey do” list. He worked in the backyard garden, planting tomatoes, cucumbers, blackberries, melons and strawberries for his family to harvest in his absence. He taught them how to garden and weed and clip the hedges. After he left for his final month of training in Houston, Kacie noticed that her sons would stand in the yard and survey the plot with their hands on their hips, in subconscious mimicry of their father.

Nathan also renovated two bathrooms, reconstructed the family car’s carburetor, replaced fixtures and trimmed the lower branches of the pine trees. He gave Kacie the passwords to their accounts and detailed directions on how to file their taxes. He taught her how to use the chain saw. He paid a professional photographer to take a family portrait and over spring break splurged for a Disney cruise. He drafted birthday and holiday cards, gifts and letters for every month (“We’re halfway there!”; “One month to go!”). He hid additional Post-it notes under couch cushions and under mattresses, or in places that Kacie might encounter in moments of stress, like the circuit breaker. “You can do it,” he wrote on the note he hid inside his toolbox. “You got this.”

A final envelope he addressed to Kacie, to open on their 15th wedding anniversary.

Jones and Shannon respected NASA’s discretion about the mission. But if they had wanted better to imagine the next year of their lives, they could have read up on a previous series of Mars simulations that shared some of CHAPEA’s objectives. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) experiment was conducted with NASA funding between 2013 and 2017 in a domed habitat on the reddish slope of the Mauna Loa volcano, 3,000 feet below the observatory there that keeps a continuous measurement of the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Civilians were selected to live inside the habitat for as long as 12 months at a time. HI-SEAS studied the nutritional and “psychosocial” benefits of various meal plans, as well as the volunteers’ behavior and mental acuity and the coping strategies they developed to withstand confined isolation.

“Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars,” a memoir-in-essays by Kate Greene, one of HI-SEAS’ original crew members, includes chapters titled “On Boredom,” “On Isolation” and “Dreams of Mars, Dreams of Earth.” Greene describes how the crushing monotony of the mission changed her. “Somewhere along the way,” she writes, “mental fatigue had become my baseline state.” The crew had difficulty sleeping, were disturbed by the constant monitoring and recording and found that the scheduled leisure time “felt a little forced.” Minor irritations began to madden Greene: the sound of sandals on the stairs, the way a crew member grazed her shin when crossing her leg under the table. She found herself desperately missing quotidian aspects of life on Earth, where she left behind her wife, aging parents and an ailing brother. The smell of fresh pineapple, in a routine sensory test, was enough to make her cry.

HI-SEAS followed Mars500 , the longest Mars simulation yet attempted. Administered by Russia’s ingenuously nomenclatured Institute of Biomedical Problems, Mars500 locked six male crew members together for 520 days, between June 2010 and November 2011, in a faux spacecraft and a faux landing module, and on a faux Mars. The Russian experimenters had hypothesized that, over time, the astronauts would lose motivation, work less effectively and suffer intensifying feelings of isolation from family and friends. After the experiment concluded, the scientists announced that their hypotheses had been “largely confirmed.” Crew members lost trust in the commanders and mission control when communications grew less frequent, developed nutritional problems and grew homesick and depressed. “The 520 days are really not easy to get through,” Wang Yue, a Chinese participant who lost 22 pounds and much of his hair, told China Daily. “It’s impossible to stay happy all the time. After all, I’m human, not a robot.”

Despite the consistency of results, the appetite for Mars simulations appears insatiable. CHAPEA is one of more than a dozen current analogue experiments NASA is participating in, including HERA, a 650-square-foot habitat that regularly houses four participants for as long as 45 days in confined isolation. Since NASA ended its participation in HI-SEAS, a conglomerate of public and private organizations has staged 12 additional missions on Mauna Loa. For nearly a quarter-century, the nonprofit Mars Society has directed research stations in the Utah desert and on a remote island in northern Canada. Mars analogues have been conducted on Dome C of the Antarctic Plateau, in a semiarid tract of northeastern Brazil, in the northern Sahara, within Austria’s Dachstein ice caves and in the Dhofar region in the Sultanate of Oman.

“We’ve seen similar things happen many times,” acknowledges Kelly C. Smith, a philosopher at Clemson University who specializes in the ethics of space exploration and advises NASA, which has no ethicists on staff. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a waste of time. The stakes are higher than in the past, after all. We’re doing this because we’re planning missions to other worlds.”

It is likely that the first travelers to Mars will have a similar psychological profile to that of Shannon, Jones and the two other participants selected by NASA for the crew: Ross Brockwell, a public-works operations manager in Chesapeake, Va., and Kelly Haston, a stem-cell biologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. All four were not only NASA enthusiasts and in perfect physical health but habitually sought out extended periods of isolation. Brockwell routinely retreated to a camp he had built on undeveloped land in Virginia, living off the grid. Haston is an ultramarathoner, having run some 70 trail races in the last decade, including several hundred-milers. Loneliness was something she had read about in books but never, as far as she could recall, experienced. A passion for isolation might have been as important to NASA’s screening process as educational attainment and blood glucose levels.

The CHAPEA participants should further benefit from their devotion to the cause. Louise Hawkley, an expert on social isolation at the University of Chicago, emphasizes that psychological responses are heavily influenced by whether people choose isolation or have it thrust upon them. A prisoner sentenced to life would be expected to suffer more than a monk who takes a vow of silence. But Hawkley points out that the participants’ loved ones, however supportive they might be, lacked the same autonomy: “Even if the crew member is fine, what happens to the family left behind?” Hawkley wondered if NASA will study the psychological effects of the mission on the families.

It will not. Nor did CHAPEA’s architects seem to have a strong grasp of the history of isolation research. In interviews, they discounted the predictive value of previous experiments, including HI-SEAS. “I don’t believe they were doing the performance metrics that we’re doing,” says Grace Douglas, CHAPEA’s principal investigator, who admitted she wasn’t “fully familiar” with the previous four-year experiment. “Our metrics are going to be at a higher level of detail and more extensive. The resource plan is more accurate.”

Rachel McCauley was the NASA official responsible for funding CHAPEA. When asked what she hoped to learn about human psychology, she dismissed the premise of the question. “The big reason why I funded it,” she said, “is because I need an even more refined answer to the question, How much food does it really take for a Mars mission?”

What about the mission’s psychological aspect? The monotony? The loneliness?

“I’m a hardware person first,” McCauley said. She is, to be precise, a solid-propulsion systems engineer. She has the distinction of being the member of our species who has been most responsible for determining the best method to catapult humanity to Mars. In order to do so, she had to know how much weight a spaceship will carry. McCauley could estimate, down to the milligram, the mass of every nut and bolt, every antivortex baffle and cargo-bay door. But how many corn tortillas and yogurt packets will four astronauts, under psychological duress, consume in 378 days? That question, or some version of it, was what McCauley needed answered. She also needed to know how much clothing they’ll need. Clothes are heavy.

Mathias, the isolation historian, was not surprised to learn that the psychological questions were a secondary consideration for NASA. But his skepticism about CHAPEA went further. Mathias questioned whether any experimental rationale could justify yet another isolation study. “I wonder if the scientific value of these simulation experiments is beside the point,” he said. The experiments, instead, seemed to him “a way of willing the colonization of Mars into being. A form of wish fulfillment — or cosplaying, to put it less poetically. This is about satisfying an urge. There seems to be a compulsion to keep repeating these fake Mars missions until we actually do it. There’s something very beautiful about this idea, but also very macabre at the same time.”

The analogue experiments reflect the utopian promise of our Martian future. For a human mission to Mars is not the highest ambition of the space program. It is just the beginning, a small step for mankind before the giant leap of planetary colonization.

Five months before CHAPEA’s call for applications, Dennis Bushnell, then chief scientist at NASA Langley Research Center and a nearly 60-year veteran of NASA, published “Futures of Deep Space Exploration, Commercialization and Colonization: The Frontiers of the Responsibly Imaginable.” Martian colonization has always been imaginable, particularly to this nation of colonizers. But in his paper Bushnell noted that the prospect has in recent years “moved from extremely difficult to increasingly feasible.” Colonization has also become increasingly desirable, because of “possibly existential societal issues, including climate change, the crashing ecosystem, machines taking the jobs, etc.” — the et cetera perhaps reflective of the obviousness of planetary decline.

A more surprising aspect of the paper is Bushnell’s prediction for how the physical hostility of Mars will be overcome: Colonists will “morph into an altered species.” He cites projections that suggest that “travelers that colonize Mars will, over time, due to the reduced g and radiation exposure, evolve into Martians.” The ultimate promise of NASA’s Mars mission is the chance to begin again — if not, exactly, as human beings, then as Martians.

There is a beautiful and macabre poetry to this rationalization. “Utopia,” after all, derives from the Greek: ou (“not”) and topos (“place”). If we manage to inhabit the not-place of Mars, enjoying a carefree life of not-problems, not-regret and not-environmental-ruin, it makes sense that we should be not-people. We should be Martians. Let people, with all their baggage and fragility and foolishness, stay home.

Mathias likened the incessant Mars analogue experiments to a traumatic repetition: a compulsion to restage a trauma in an irrational, futile attempt to undo a profound damage. “The urge to try to recreate a perfect world is always going to be about rehearsing what we got wrong here,” he said. “We’re not chasing Mars. We’re mourning Earth.”

In late May, a month before sealing themselves within the habitat, the four crew members and two alternates reported to Houston for a final month of training and evaluation. Three weeks before the ingress, NASA hosted a “family weekend” for the crew’s loved ones. The visitors were given a tour of the Johnson Space Center. They met a real astronaut, saw replicas of spaceships, walked around in the red sandbox that crew members would use for their “spacewalks” and asked questions directly of CHAPEA’s lead researcher, Grace Douglas. The three Jones boys were proud to learn how their father was helping to shape the future of humanity.

But the most valuable part of the weekend, the families agreed, was the chance to meet one another. During a barbecue by the hotel pool, they shared their anxieties about the coming year. They exchanged techniques for managing stress and pledged to keep in close contact through a private Facebook page.

On Jake Harwood’s final evening in Houston, Alyssa Shannon prepared a shrimp salad in the hotel kitchenette. It was bittersweet: the last meal she would fix in more than a year. Before leaving Oakland, she had frozen about a dozen feasts for Jake and their friends to enjoy during her absence. She would miss cooking. There would be no pizza on Mars.

The couple gazed out the window at a full moon. There would be 13 more, Jake told her, before she returned from Mars. He would be counting down the full moons until they saw each other again.

They awoke at dawn and watched the sun rise. Alyssa drove him to the airport. “It was hard to say goodbye,” Jake said, if not as hard, he anticipated, as their final phone call before the ingress, which he referred to as the “big one.” But Alyssa’s final phone call from Houston came five days earlier than he expected.

Alyssa announced that NASA had removed her from the mission. The investigators pulled her into a room and told her that she had been “excluded from continuing.” She would be replaced by one of the alternates, Anca Selariu, a microbiologist in the U.S. Navy. Alyssa did not know why she had been removed. The investigators refused to tell her, she said. They said only that their decision had not been based on her performance. They added that sometimes, in the final tests before a mission, they found something that was not “medically serious” but might present a hazard. Like an increased risk of kidney stones.

“Do I have an increased risk of kidney stones?” Alyssa asked.

Kidney stones was just an example, the investigators insisted. But they refused to say more, lest they compromise the integrity of the experiment.

Alyssa doubted that she had been torpedoed by a medical condition. She wondered instead if she wasn’t “exactly the right mix of introvert and extrovert they were seeking.” Or perhaps they had grown concerned about the crew’s social dynamic? If so, Alyssa couldn’t say why. The investigators, she said, told her that she could make up any excuse she wanted, and they wouldn’t deny it. “But lying is so unsatisfying,” she said. “And you have to remember the lie. It’s too challenging. I want to go to the truth. There was a reason, and they couldn’t tell me what it was.”

The uncertainty plagued her, but not as much as the loss she felt from the death of a dream she had nurtured since the Lego Martian colonies of her childhood. She couldn’t help feeling wounded. “This has been hard on my ego,” she said. “It’s a big upheaval. It’s been uncomfortable.” She sighed. “But I have to trust that my departure is for the best of the mission. By stepping back I’m just serving in a different way.”

Her sudden banishment led to some logistical awkwardness at home. “When an astronaut comes back,” Kate Greene wrote, “Earth isn’t where it was.” When Alyssa came back, she found herself suddenly without a job, income or home. Her hospital had promised her a position in 13 months, but in the meantime someone had been hired to replace her. Nor would NASA pay her the full stipend she had been promised, which she says was about $60,000. She didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits. And she had rented her apartment for a year. Though she knew she would be able to move in with Jake, they hadn’t previously decided to live together.

Jake could not disguise his excitement. He met her at the airport and brought her to his house, where they shared a pizza.

Alyssa, an indefatigable optimist, began brainstorming over dinner. Perhaps she would use the sudden windfall of free time to set out on a major backpacking adventure or a cross-country road trip. Maybe she would begin a new career. Or maybe she wouldn’t go back to work — ever. Jake listened, humoring her. Then, with great tenderness, he proposed that she take a couple of weeks to herself before deciding what to do with the rest of her life.

On the afternoon of Sunday, June 25, the couple opened NASA’s YouTube channel. The four crew members stood on a platform in front of the habitat. They wore black jumpsuits embossed with the reddish CHAPEA mission patch: Mars Dune Alpha, rendered not inside a Houston warehouse but at the foot of a Martian sierra, the same mountain range painted on the wall of the sandbox.

“The knowledge we gain here will help enable us to send humans to Mars and bring them home safely,” Grace Douglas said. The crew members expressed their gratitude to NASA. When Anca Selariu said, “I just can’t believe that I’m here,” Alyssa teared up.

As soon as Nathan Jones began speaking about his family, he broke down. Kelly Haston patted his shoulder. “To my wife and kids,” he finally said, through a sob, “I love you to Mars and back.”

Douglas opened the door to the habitat. It was not a special hatch with airlocks or anything: It was just a plain white office door. The crew, waving, entered. Douglas shut the door firmly behind them.

From inside the sealed habitat, the crew could be heard whooping with joy.

In Springfield, Kacie Jones was watching with her sons. She had felt it was important that she be alone with the boys, without any extended family, not knowing how they would respond to the sight of their father leaving for a year. In the end, the boys were fine. Kacie was not. But about 22 minutes after the habitat door closed, she received a text message. It came from Mars.

“I love you,” Nathan wrote.

Kacie took a deep breath. “We’re finally in it,” she told herself. “Which means now we can move forward.” She took the boys for tacos, put them to sleep and set the alarm clock so that she had enough time, in the morning, to get them ready for camp.

At Jake’s house in Oakland, after Alyssa closed the laptop, there was a moment in which they did not know what to do with themselves. They figured Alyssa’s family would worry about her, so she put on a costume spacesuit and dressed Bun Bun, a stuffed rabbit that she had planned to bring to Fake Mars, in a tiny NASA spacesuit. Jake snapped portraits and sent them to her family to let them know she was all right. Or at least that, once the sting of missing out on a year on Mars had subsided, she would be all right. That staying on Earth, with her recipe collections and Bun Bun and her devoted partner, might not be such a terrible outcome after all.

Then she baked a whole-wheat sourdough pizza, and she and Jake ate it, together.

Nathaniel Rich, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author, most recently, of “Second Nature: Scenes From a World Remade.” Isabel Seliger is an artist and illustrator in Berlin. She often illustrates science articles with narrative elements.

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

NASA’s Juno orbiter is on a mission to explore Jupiter’s rings and moons. A recent flyby yielded new data about Io, Jupiter’s volcanic moon .

Ingenuity, the NASA helicopter flying over Mars, ended its mission. Here is a look back at what it helped to accomplish with its 772 space flights .

What do you call a galaxy without stars? In addition to dark matter and dark energy, we now have dark galaxies  — collections of stars so sparse and faint that they are all but invisible.

Orbits above Earth are filling with satellites at an astounding pace. They could interfere with ground astronomy’s ability to answer questions about the cosmos  and are polluting the stratosphere .

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

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Profile in Courage Award Lanterns

Inspire the next generation of leaders with President Kennedy's powerful legacy!

The john f. kennedy profile in courage award®, 2024 profile in courage award.

The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation will continue the tradition of honoring individuals who demonstrate the qualities of politically courageous leadership in the spirit of  Profiles in Courage . The 2024 Profile in Courage Award recipient will be announced this spring in advance of the Profile in Courage Award Gala, to be held later this year.

Submit a nomination for this year’s award.

Watch the 2023 Ceremony

On October 29, 2023, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and her children, Jack Schlossberg and Tatiana Schlossberg, members of the Profile in Courage Award Committee, presented the Profile in Courage Awards in a live-streamed ceremony.

Meet the Recipients

Learn how some past Profile in Courage Award recipients have embodied JFK's definition of political courage.

Gabrielle Giffords

Lifetime Achievement

Viktor Yushchenko

Human Rights

Quick Facts

Learn more about the Profile in Courage Award.

Total Profile in Courage Awards

Youngest Awardee

Joseph Darby

Oldest Awardee

George H.W. Bush

IMAGES

  1. Profile In Courage Essay Contest 2023

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  2. Profile in Courage Essay Contest Winners Talk About Their Teachers

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  3. Essay Contest Handout

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  4. Veterans History Project, Niles IL: Profiles In Courage High School

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  6. John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

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COMMENTS

  1. Past Winning Essays

    Profile in Courage Essay Contest Past Winning Essays 2023 Winning Essay by Jeremy Haynes State Senator Joseph N. Langan 2022 Winning Essay By Theodora McGee State Rep. José Tomás Canales 2021 Winning Essay By Anna Dougherty Mayor Dana Redd 2020 Winning Essay By Noah Durham Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr.: "One of a Kind"

  2. Where Are They Now: Kevin Zhou, 2005 Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    This series profiles past winners of the Profile in Courage Essay Contest — which is currently open for submissions from U.S. high school students, with a $10,000 first prize scholarship. Our…

  3. The Ultimate Guide to the Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    The rewards for winning the Profile in Courage Essay Contest are quite enticing. The first-place winner receives $10,000, with $3,000 in cash and a $7,000 college scholarship. Additional cash prizes are awarded to the second-place winner ($1,000), and up to five finalists ($500 each). Moreover, all winners and finalists receive an invitation to ...

  4. John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    The winner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest receives a $10,000 cash award and is invited to accept their prize at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts during the Profile in Courage Award events—with all travel and lodging expenses paid for.

  5. Profile in Courage Essay Contest Winners Talk About Their ...

    How do teachers play a crucial role in helping students craft a winning essay? Listen to past winners and finalists talk about how their teachers helped them.

  6. John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    Criteria Participate Deadlines In Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy recounted the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers to do what was right for the nation.

  7. JFK Library on Twitter: "Last year's winner of the Profile in Courage

    Last year's winner of the Profile in Courage Essay Contest ™️ shares what political courage means to her and how the subject of her essay, Rep. José Canales, demonstrated such courage. Our 2023 essay contest is open!

  8. Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    The Profile in Courage Essay Contest is an annual essay competition that was created to honor President John F. Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage.". The book focuses on eight U.S. senators who showed courage and integrity by standing up for their beliefs, even when it was difficult to do so. The essay contest aims to inspire young ...

  9. PDF Winners, Finalists, Semifinalists, and Honorable Mentions

    First Place Winner: Jeremy Haynes, a senior at Mobile Christian School in Mobile, Alabama, profiled Joseph Langan, former State Senator of Alabama. Second Place Winner: Baileigh Borna, a junior at River Ridge High School in Woodstock, Georgia, profiled Penny Blue, a former School Board Member of Franklin County, Virginia. Finalists:

  10. John F. Kennedy Profile In Courage Essay Contest

    The JFK Courage Essay Contest asks students to write an original and creative essay demonstrating an understanding of the political courage described in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Competition Topic: Describes and analyzes an act of political courage by an American elected official who served during or after 1917.

  11. Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation invites U.S. high school students to write an essay on an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1956. The deadline for submissions to the Profile in Courage Essay Contest is January 5, 2015. In his 1956 book Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy recounted the stories ...

  12. JFK Library and Museum's Profile in Courage Essay Contest (with Bard

    The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum has an annual Profile in Courage Essay Contest for 9-12th graders. Please click here to learn more. The 2024 essay topic is: "Describe and analyze an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917, the year John F. Kennedy was born.

  13. Winning the Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    Past winners of the Profile in Courage Award include former U.S. presidents such as Barack Obama and George H.W. Bush. Important Dates and Deadlines Opens Sep 1, 2023, 12:00 AM (EDT) Deadline for registration form submission AND essay - January 12, 2024, at 11:59 PM (EST) Results release date - April 20th, 2024

  14. Profile in Courage High School Awards

    The Profile in Courage Essay Contest challenges students to write an original and creative essay that demonstrates an understanding of political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage. ... Past winners and finalists are not eligible to participate. Employees of John Hancock Financial Services and members of their ...

  15. Title: Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    The Profile in Courage Essay Contest challenges students to write an original and creative essay that demonstrates an understanding of political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage. The maximum word count is 1,000 with a ... Past winners and finalists are not eligible to participate. Employees of John

  16. PDF John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

    • Essays must describe an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917, the year John F. Kennedy was born. The official may have addressed an issue at the local, state, or national level. Essays about past recipients of the Profile in Courage Award will be disqualified unless they describe an act of ...

  17. JFK profiles in courage essay contest : r/scholarships

    JFK profiles in courage essay contest. Did anyone receive any updates regarding their status of their essay? Or if anyone has former experience with the competition when do they typically notify you of your results? I don't wanna doxx myself so i'll just say i recieved an email saying i was one of the top 25 award winners.

  18. Profiles In Courage Essay Contest Past Winners

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  19. John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest Winner Describes

    BOSTON - The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation today announced that Anna Dougherty, a sophomore at Paul VI High School in Haddonfield, New Jersey, has won the national John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest for High School Students.

  20. The 2024 Navy History and Heritage Awards Program

    New Year's Day Deck Log Contest; Grants and Fellowships . Grants and Fellowships - Main; Past Award Recipients; Employment; Internships; Partner Organizations. Partner Organizations - Main; Foundations; Agency Partners; Essay Contest. Essay Contest - Main; 2023 Winners; 2022 Winners; 2021 Winners; 2020 Winners; 2019 Winners; 2018 Winners; 2017 ...

  21. Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?

    "Wow," Harwood said. "Yeah," Shannon said. "Wow." They sat in silence with the information, struggling to fathom the shape and weight of it, for a very long time.

  22. The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award®

    On October 29, 2023, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and her children, Jack Schlossberg and Tatiana Schlossberg, members of the Profile in Courage Award Committee, presented the Profile in Courage Awards in a live-streamed ceremony. Meet the Recipients