A viral claim that NASA is preparing astronauts to sleep through Mars missions overstates a 2024 NIAC award for STASH, an early-stage project to study hibernation biology in rodents.
NASA says the ISS experiment has not begun because the required microgravity research hardware does not yet exist; the current work is designing that system, not testing synthetic torpor in humans.
STASH aims to measure rodent oxygen use, heart rate, ventilation and body temperature in space to see whether hibernation could protect against muscle and bone loss.
Human synthetic torpor remains hypothetical: NASA has announced no human trials, no approved astronaut hibernation program and no crewed Mars mission architecture that includes it.
NASA has explored torpor concepts for more than a decade, including a 2016 Mars habitat study, but those efforts were framed as speculative long-term research rather than operational plans.