Mission to Mars: NASA needs to find the right mix of crew mates
BALTIMORE, Md. — NASA will be choosing astronauts to travel to Mars, the Red Planet, sometime after 2030. They will need a small group of people who are smart, skilled and able to get along with others.
The voyage is almost 34 million miles one way and could take three years. The astronauts will need to work well together in a lonely, faraway ship. It will be tight and have little space to move around in.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University got money from NASA to help the nation’s space agency develop a way to find the best astronauts. In addition to being the best, they must also be friendly. Grouchy, moody types will not be chosen. Chatty individuals would be a problem, too. “NASA is already really good at picking people,” said Michael Rosen, a Hopkins psychologist who is leading the effort. “But they’ll need to be better.”
How Can Astronauts Stay Healthy?
The project is one of 11 NASA projects given to 10 universities sharing in about $5.7 million of NASA funding. They will study astronaut health and skills on future space missions over the next two or three years. The studies will add to what is already known about mental and physical health of astronauts.
Missions to Mars and faraway asteroids will be more difficult. Astronauts will be in space much longer than the 18 months they now spend on the International Space Station. They will have less room. There will be no escape pod and far less communication. It will take more than 20 minutes for a message to reach Earth.
The results of this NASA research will also help keep the astronauts healthy in space and after they return home. It also could help find new treatments for medical and emotional problems.
Future Crew Still In High School
None of the Mars astronauts can go through this testing today. Most of them are still in high school. Scientists say they will have to study people today who will be stand-ins for the 2030 astronauts.
One project will study workers in a lonely, faraway place in Antarctica for 14 months. They will use cycling and video games to help manage their worries, feeling tired and getting angry. Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania says they will measure how the people learn to live with being faraway, alone and unable to move around.
At the State University of New York, Stony Brook, researchers will study blood samples. These are to be taken from astronauts before, during and after space travel. The scientists are looking for ways space travelers fight off disease. Zero gravity and radiation exposure from prolonged time in space can lead to illnesses, said Professor KanokpornRithidech.
Other researchers at the University of Miami will use NASA simulators that mimic the lack of gravity to understand why astronauts develop problems seeing. Deep space travel could make this worse, said Professor Noam Alperin.
Cultural Differences Can Cause Conflicts
C. Shawn Burke, a scientist at the University of Central Florida, will work on ways that crews from different countries can handle cultural differences. She will conduct interviews with people familiar with astronaut living and working conditions. Some crew members might like a strong leader. Others might like the team to be more democratic in its decisions. This will help develop training programs for astronauts to avoid conflicts during the flight. When crews go up to space they need to be a smooth working team, she said.
Her research, along with work by Rosen at Johns Hopkins and researchers at Rice University in Texas, will be used for identifying the best team to send into deep space.
At Hopkins, Rosen plans to study surgical and critical-care resident doctors who spend a month at a time in Johns Hopkins intensive-care units. These new doctors must calmly handle stressful and challenging situations in isolated settings for up to 80 hours a week. Astronauts will have that kind of stress, he said.
New Doctors Have Stress Like Astronauts
The doctors will be interviewed. They will also have wristbands and smartphone apps that track heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. The astronauts will be followed in this way, too.
The Johns Hopkins researchers hope to see how they perform under pressure and what they contribute to the group. They also want to know how the group responds to them. If their voice is too loud, for example, “they may not be great to have on a long mission,” said Rosen.
Rosen said he and the team at Rice have long studied such team-based performance in high-risk environments, and he expects to use the findings not just to benefit NASA’s astronaut selection process but perhaps to help customize doctor training at Johns Hopkins and beyond. Doctors with natural abilities in such stressful situations may need less time in training, while others may need more time and better coping skills, he said.
The final tool won’t be a one-size-fits-all assessment but a method of picking the proper team, with each member bringing helpful characteristics.
“What does this team to Mars need to be successful?” Rosen asked. “The right mix of people.”
The EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) Exercise Device is used to test potential astronauts on their weightlessness in space. It’s housed at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Photo: NASA