PSYCHOLOGY
Long-duration space travel can take a heavy toll on your mental well-being. ISS astronauts often report problems with insomnia and loss of appetite, and it can be hard to find any privacy in the confines of the craft. Crews also have to be carefully selected to make sure that every member is easygoing – there is the constant threat of something going wrong, and you can’t risk astronauts irritating each other too much. It’s not like you can diffuse an argument by avoiding each other or stepping outside for some air! You have to spend months on end with the same people, isolated from all your loved ones at home.
At least from the ISS you can still enjoy the view of the Earth below – on a mission to Mars the feeling of remoteness will be even stronger. And the signal delay time of up to 40 minutes will mean that you’ll not even be able to talk to anyone on Earth – all contact will be by email or video message.
These psychological issues are tricky to detect early on, and when you’re investigating the effects on group cohesion it’s hard to think of scientific ways to measure the outcome. While medical tests might be able to reveal the physiological effects of spaceflight on your body, people might be less inclined to selfreport on psychological stresses or problems they are encountering. NASA has been paying particular attention to these psychological effects. In a 2016 report on human health risks, they highlighted several areas needing further study. These include the effects of long-term disruption to sleeping patterns and ‘circadian rhythm desynchronisation’. This is when your body’s internal cycles of temperature regulation, metabolic activity, and wakefulness, for example, are forced out of rhythm with each other – you’re probably familiar with this from jet-lag. But what are the effects of experiencing desynchronisation for months or years of a lengthy space mission? The report recommended more research into how diet and nutrition can affect these circadian rhythms, and whether the timing of meals, for example, might help solve the problem.
One of the best ways of studying psychological effects is in similarly isolated situations back on Earth. Dr Beth Healey has spent more than a year on the Concordia Station in the icy depths of Antarctica, as the ESA’s research doctor. During a polar winter you don’t see sunshine for three months, and no evacuation is possible even in an emergency – in this sense the Concordia scientists are more isolated than ISS astronauts. In one of Healey’s experiments, she got the crew to wear trackers. These monitored how mobile each person was, and who they interacted with. “This provided valuable information regarding how group dynamics changed over time and could identify critical time points in the mission where crew members may be more likely to isolate themselves or seek out social interaction, or when conflicts were most likely to occur,” she says.
Healey also worked on developing a 10-part cognition test, which is now likely to be adopted into the astronauts’ routines aboard the ISS. “The test looks at lots of different variables, for example risktaking behaviour, reaction times, memory testing, and so on. The astronauts would take this regularly, and any dip in performance would prompt mission control to investigate,” she explains.