Northwestern study of isolated analogue teams reveals weak points for Mission to Mars

EVANSTON — Researchers at Northwestern University are developing a predictive model to help NASA anticipate conflicts and communication failures among crew members and put an end to the problems that could make or break the mission to Mars.

NASA has formalized its intention to send a crewed spaceship to Mars, a trip that could require 250 million kilometers. Noshir Contractor and Leslie DeChurch, North West faculty, and their collaborators, are charting a new course with a series of projects focused on the scientific knowledge of teams and researchers. networks.

In a multiphase study conducted in two analog environments – HERA in the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the SIRIUS mission in the NEK analog located in the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Russia – scientists are studying the Analog behavior The crews of astronauts performing simulated missions, with isolation, sleep deprivation, specially designed tasks and mission control, replicating the true journey into space with delayed communication.

The goal is threefold: to establish the effects of isolation and confinement on the functioning of the team, to identify methods to improve the team's performance and to develop a predictive model that the NASA could use to bring together the ideal team and identify potential problems with teams already composed during the mission.

Contractor and DeChurch discussed their latest findings and next steps at a press conference Feb. 17 at 10:00 am Eastern Time at the annual meeting of the American Association. for the Progress of Science (AAAS) in Washington, DC.

"It's as if astronaut Scott Kelly was saying," Teamwork makes it possible to achieve the dream, "said Contractor, behavioral science professor Jane S. and William J. White at the McCormick School of Engineering, School of Communication and Kellogg School of Management.

Even for an astronaut, the psychological demands of this trip to Mars will be exceptional. The spacecraft will be small, about the size of a studio, and the round trip will last almost three years.

"Astronauts are super-humans, incredibly fit and fit," said DeChurch, professor of communication and psychology at Northwestern. "We are using a state-of-the-art crew selection system and are making it even better by finding the values, features and other features that will allow NASA to build crews that are going well. ;hear."

Delays in communication with mission controls around the world will exceed 20 minutes. In this sense, the mission on Mars will not resemble any previous mission.

"Many efforts to try to create models to simulate the future have been criticized because people said it was not really based on good data," said the contractor. "What we have here is good, unprecedented data, we are not talking about intuition or expert opinions, this model is based on real data."

Northwestern researchers collected data from the Human Experimentation Research Analog (HERA) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The HERA capsule simulator houses astronauts for up to 45 days; a mission control simulation outside the capsule increases realism with sound effects, vibrations and communication delays.

People indoors suffer sleep deprivation and attempt to perform tasks. Researchers collect punctual measurements on individual performances, moods, psychosocial adaptation, etc.

The DeChurch and Contractor teams have studied the reduced ability to think creatively and solve problems, according to the results of the first eight analog space teams, and are able to complete tasks between 20 and 60% of the time.

"Creative thinking and problem solving are the things that will really count for a mission on Mars," said DeChurch. "We need the team to receive the correct answer 100% of the time."

The next phase of the research, which just started on Friday, February 15th, is to use the model to predict failures and problems experienced by a new HERA crew and to make changes to "who is working with whom, what, when "said the contractor. "We will run our model to see how we can push the team to a more positive path and make it more successful."

Researchers are also expanding the experience at the SIRIUS analogue in Moscow, where, as of March 15, four Russians and two Americans will undertake a 120-day moonlighting mission, including a landing on the moon.

Contractor and DeChurch are at the heart of four NASA-funded projects that explore the dynamics and compatibility of teams for a trip to Mars.

Their NASA studies deal with different aspects of crew challenges:

• The likelihood that the crew and their support crews on Earth have good chemistry and adaptation mechanisms; how to predict possible results in terms of crew compatibility
• The design of the work; structure the workflow so that astronauts can better manage the transitions from solo tasks to team tasks
• Identify and build shared mental models, in which a team of diverse specialists can find enough common ground to perform their tasks effectively, but not as much as it engages in a "group reflection" or form alliances.

Contractor, a leading expert in network analysis and computational social science, leads the Northwestern Science of Networks in SONIC research group. DeChurch, a leading team and leadership expert who leads ATLAS (Advancing Teams, Leaders and Systems), focuses on team performance. psychology, social interactions and the best functioning of multi-team systems.

"Our complementary strengths have been a winning combination to tackle major interdisciplinary issues," said DeChurch.

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