Filipino Crew Completes PhilSA’s First Analog Space Mission in Batangas
PhilSA has finished its first analog mission, and the crew was entirely Filipino. The Analog Habitat Waypoint (ANAHAW) ran for 24 hours on September 25 and 26, 2026, at Batangas State University.
A moon base on a campus
Analog missions copy parts of lunar or Martian living on Earth. Crews deal with isolation and communication delays, and they work with limited resources. PhilSA ran ANAHAW with Batangas State University at its Alangilan Campus.
Eleven people took part. Six lived and worked inside the simulated lunar habitat, and five staffed mission control, where they monitored operations and gave technical support.
The six inside
Suguru Vaughn Hernandez was Mission Commander, with Nathaniel Macato as Flight Engineer. Bianca Angeline Alcantara and Yzhae Marrione Villaruel were the Mission Scientists, Jeremaine Ko was Communications Officer and Mary Audrey Amorao was Health and Nutrition Specialist.
Their experiments and demonstrations covered human-rover collaboration, a crew welfare mentoring system, crew dynamics during an emergency, surface microbial sampling and ground-based germination screening of Philippine food crops. The rover was a Batangas State University unit, used to explore possible applications in emergency response and communications, along with other scientific operations.
Months of prep for one day
Before the mission, every participant finished a six-part learning series on analog missions. The program started in April. Kristine Atienza, the first Filipino analog astronaut, led the training sessions and mentored the crew. She also helped PhilSA develop the mission concept and gave technical input during preparations. Atienza earned her title on a six-day HI-SEAS analog mission in Hawaii.
What PhilSA has lined up next
The day before the mission began, four Filipino analog astronauts and PhilSA officials met President Marcos at Malacañang. PhilSA is now preparing ANAHAW 2.0, in which several universities would run analog missions in 2027.
The agency is also considering a two-week all-Filipino analog mission in 2027, possibly at the LunAres Research Station in Poland or the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. Acting Director General Gay Jane Perez said an all-Filipino crew could help researchers see how Filipinos respond to isolation, confinement and limited resources. A three-year astronaut program is also in development, with a nationwide search and a competitive selection process for candidates.
