Pod Insights Speaking of Psychology Mind over Mars: The psychology of space exploration, with Suzanne Bell, PhD About this episode Astronauts on a future mission to Mars will face many challenges, including three years in a tiny spacecraft and a Mars habitat, with just a few other crew members and a 22-minute delay for any communication back to Earth. Psychologist Suzanne Bell, PhD, head of NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Lab, talks about the human challenges of long-term space exploration, what it will take to keep astronauts mentally and physically healthy, and how researchers are using a simulated Mars habitat here on earth to prepare for a mission to Mars.
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0:29 Kim Mills? NASA has said that it's working towards sending humans to Mars sometime in the 2030s. A round trip mission to Mars, which is 140 million miles from Earth, would take at least three years. For the astronauts, that would mean three years of confinement in a small space and limited or delayed communications with those back on Earth. As engineers consider the technical challenges involved in long-term space exploration, psychologists and other behavioral scientists are thinking about the human challenges. Today, we're going to talk to a NASA psychologist about what those challenges are and how scientists are working to address them. We'll discuss the skills and supports that astronauts will need to stay mentally and
1:14 Kim Mills? physically healthy on such a long trip. How does NASA determine who has the right stuff for such a trip? How will they avoid the potential pitfalls of isolation and confinement? What skills will they need to work effectively as a team? And how do personality and other behavioral traits factor into astronauts' selection? What do we know from prior space missions? And how can researchers study and prepare astronauts for long-term space travel while they're here on Earth? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.
2:00 Kim Mills? My guest today is Dr. Suzanne Bell, an industrial organizational psychologist who leads the Behavioral Health and Performance Lab at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, she and her colleagues study the human aspects of space exploration, including the skills and supports that astronauts will need on future long-term missions. Dr. Bell has a background studying teamwork and team effectiveness. Before joining NASA full-time in 2021, she was a psychology professor at DePaul University. Dr. Bell, thank you for joining me today.
2:32 Speaker 02 Thank you for having me, Kim.
2:34 Kim Mills? Can you start by giving listeners an overview of what you and your colleagues work on at NASA's Behavioral Health and Performance Lab? What are the big questions you're trying to answer?
2:43 Speaker 02 Oh, wow. Well, you summarize the kind of challenges of future spaceflight. And what our lab is really charged with is looking to the future. So when we go to Artemis missions, which will be our missions returning to the moon, when we go on to Mars, what are the challenges? What are the risks of spaceflight? And how do those affect behavioral health performance and team functioning, team performance? And then, once we understand those risks and how do they evolve? How do we develop interventions, countermeasures, support, how to select people, whatever we can do to help astronauts survive and thrive in that incredibly demanding circumstance?
3:28 Kim Mills? What are the biggest challenges that astronauts will face on a long-term mission like a trip to Mars that they haven't faced on shorter trips into space?
3:37 Speaker 02 So, the way the International Space Station is right now, which is where we go into space, we call it low Earth orbit. It's fairly near Earth. You can get there relatively quickly. Still difficult, but you are somewhat protected from some of the radiation effects that you would have in deep space. You can come back within, you know, a couple of days if really necessary for a medical emergency. And even one other thing I'll point out is when crew do complicated things like spacewalk... They have real time support from mission control. If you watch a spacewalk on NASA TV, you can hear the back and forth and the back and forth. Mission control is providing expertise.
4:20 Speaker 02 Astronauts are executing really complicated feats, and this is in real time. As we move to our moon missions, things start to get more complicated. Now we're talking about a vehicle that's inside, instead of the size of the International Space Station, which is about a five-bedroom house size equivalent. Now we're talking about a really small space, tiny space, in fact. The, right now, our missions are planned to use Orion as one of the ways that we get at least to the moon and to the orbit of the moon. And so that is a tiny space. You're now having to live with people, four people in a really small space, as I mentioned. There starts to be communication delays.
5:04 Speaker 02 So when we do spacewalks down to Earth, the person who is helping the spacewalk will have real-time communication with the person on spacewalk, but will start to have five to 10-second delays back to mission control. So imagine, you know, transferring information where some people you're talking to real time, some is on a comm delay. Beyond that, they'll also be exposed to higher levels of radiation. When we go on to Mars, it becomes even more complicated. Now you're talking about a two-and-a-half-year mission in a very small space. And as we get to the Mars surface, when Mars is at its greatest distance from Earth, a 22-minute communication delay each way.
5:48 Speaker 02 So imagine that right now, when we have problems on the International Space Station or challenging the spacewalks, that real-time communication, it'll take 22 minutes for Earth to even understand or know if the crew has successfully landed or if they're successfully doing an EVA. And if they need help, they'll have another 22 minutes to wait for that response. So at a minimum, we might be at 44-minute delays. So now you're asking a small team. To live in a small space, live in isolation for a long period of time, be exposed to radiation in a much higher quantities. And on top of that, do what hundreds of people would normally do with
6:31 Speaker 02 a crew of four and whatever computer supports we can send. So it's really asking a lot of the astronauts and the crew that will someday go and be the first ones to land on Mars.
6:43 Kim Mills? So how are the skill sets different for these long-term astronauts that you're screening now? How are they different from the astronauts who just go to the International Space Station or do shorter trips?
6:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we look at different competencies that are needed for different mission scenarios. And some things that really increase in importance in longer-term missions, such we're expecting to Mars, would be this idea of someone to be able to be resilient and really be able to engage in self-care. Because if you can't take care of yourself in terms of nutrition, working out, keeping your body healthy, keeping your mind healthy, then you're not going to be a good team player, especially in extreme circumstances like that. Teamwork is extremely important. They'll have to coordinate seamlessly
7:38 Speaker 02 on these complex tasks. But if you're not even healthy yourself first, you know, we really need all four people. So they need self-care to contribute. Other things that become critically important are these group living skills. So right now, there's a lot of privacy in the International Space Station. Yes, it's, you know, living with people in similar to a house. But if you go to bed at night, you can have your own private chamber. Or, you know, there's food that can be resupplied. And so there's the possibility to kind of get preference in what you want to eat. When we're talking about Mars, it's so resource restricted. And so really, someone who's able to be flexible
8:20 Speaker 02 and still do things like eat regardless of what's, you know, left to eat and, you know, be able to effectively navigate living together in a really small space and be able to maintain positive relations so they can execute that complicated teamwork and come back.
8:35 Kim Mills? So what does the testing look like to screen astronauts? I mean, this is not a simple thing. You can't just have people fill out a paper questionnaire and say, I'm resilient. I mean, how do you determine that they really are?
8:47 Speaker 02 It's a very competitive process to be an astronaut. A lot of people have dreamed of being an astronaut since they were little kids. You know, we all look up into the stars and dream, maybe someday that'll be us. So in more recent astronaut selection cycles, we've had as many as 20,000 people apply to something like eight to 10 slots, right? And so as you're pointing out, you know, it can't just be self-report bubbles and you kind of go on with your life and hope that they responded correctly because you'd have about 20,000 people saying, you know, five out of five on resilience. And then you put them in a tin can and it doesn't work out. So we use both our knowledge from research and then evidence-based and operational expertise
9:29 Speaker 02 to really look at what, as I mentioned, those competencies that are needed. And then specifically design multi-method ways to look into those competencies. So we can get, start to get a picture of what someone might be like behaviorally in such an extreme environment and if they'd be able to effectively cope.
9:47 Kim Mills? Your team recently completed the first round of a simulated Mars mission called Chapea, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog. Tell us about that. I mean, that sounds like a dry run for actually doing one of these long trips.
10:01 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Chapea is a phenomenal project. So Chapea, we put a crew of four in an isolated and confined environment for 378 days. So they didn't go home at night. They're in there. And when they are living in that habitat, we expose them to Mars resource-restricted, Mars resource-restricted environment. So an example is right now on the ISS, we can send care packages and do things like send fresh food supply periodically. And that gives them just enough variation in their diet where they still eat and don't, they do lose some weight, but it's, but they're able to maintain their health and readiness. When we're talking about Mars...
10:45 Speaker 02 We'll probably have to pre-position food before the crews even selected. So the team here will have to choose what's being pre-positioned. And so what we did in Chapea was restrict the environment in those types of ways. Restrict water usage, restrict the food that they were given, to be Mars realistic. We restricted their communication with friends and family so that it was on that between a 12 and 22 minute communication delay. And so it was really this amazing circumstance where then we're able to collect multidisciplinary data that gives us a look on how things like nutrition and behavioral health and performance and exercise and all of these different domains related to human health
11:30 Speaker 02 and performance can interact and what kinds of trades we would have to make to really help someone survive and thrive in those circumstances. So that was, it's a really important study that we're doing that allows us to do those interdisciplinary trades around what do people need to sustain their health in that type of environment.
11:50 Kim Mills? And what were some of the most important lessons that came out of that mission?
11:54 Speaker 02 Well, we are gearing up for Mission 2. So the way the project was designed is we actually have a three-mission campaign where we at the outset have designed it in certain ways to be able to look at our key objectives for key manipulations that we're interested in for this. And so we do have trends from the first crew, but we're not really talking too much about those because we want to be careful to not chase after, you know, trends that were anomaly of this particular crew. And we'll combine that with data we'll be getting from Mission 2 and Mission 3. And then we'll be able to, you know, start to see these important trends and what trades we'll need to make to ensure that they have cognitive function and, you know, are able
12:38 Speaker 02 to meet the physical demands of extravehicular activities and all the just various things that will be demands on them physically and psychologically.
12:48 Kim Mills? Was anything surprising that came out of this?
12:51 Speaker 02 You know, I don't know if surprising the right word is the right word, but I think that, you know, from being in the weeds day after day in the project, you know, we, my lab heavily supports that project. And it really is difficult to be in isolation for 378 days. And sometimes I think when, um, you know, you see a crew come out smiling and everything looks good. It's like, oh, good. Well, that's, you know, it's just on the next floor. But you know, that is a carefully selected crew to be astronaut like. So we were able to use a lot of our wisdom from how to select astronauts and apply that to the crew. So these are carefully chosen crew, carefully trained and prepared and carefully supported crew.
13:35 Speaker 02 And even with that, you know, we, we saw different challenges. And so I think the important takeaway is all of our notions that, yeah, that, that seems like an extreme and challenging environment, you know, that is, that is definitely true. As well as making difficult trades around how do you support that crew? So a challenge for space is always payload. So how much can you actually send to space? I mean, if the exercise equipment is not the right equipment, and how much payload can you actually spend on the exercise equipment? Or does more of it need to be on food or water? And it's a constant trade to be able to sustain life in such a complex environment
14:19 Speaker 02 that it's really important for us to have multidisciplinary projects like Chapea, where we get that comprehensive data look at human health and performance, including behavioral health and teamwork and team functioning, so that we can make those important trades and actually do this where we're going to Mars and really sending what the crew needs and making the highest priority on what's the absolute must haves for the mission.
14:42 Kim Mills? How do you protect an astronaut's mental health in a situation like this? I mean, what happens if you are a year out and you suddenly have, you're freaking out? I mean, this isn't what I expected, you know? I mean, how do you counsel somebody who might be having some kind of anxiety, for example? I mean, I know you try to screen for that beforehand, but who knows what might happen to somebody out there in space?
15:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely, especially when we look to exploration missions of the future. Right now, behavioral health is well managed in the ISS, and one of the things that happens is a private psychological conference where they get to talk with an operational psychologist during the missions. They have, one of their key coping strategies that they use is talking to their friends and family. So just like we rely on our families for support on Earth, so do ISS astronauts and the International Space Station astronauts. And then also, as you mentioned, selection. When we move to future missions, that's exactly what my lab really focuses on, is what is the tech development and countermeasure development for these types of things that
15:50 Speaker 02 might happen when, you know, we are in these more extreme conditions that we're expecting? And so, one of the things we do in our research is what we call characterize the risks. So even understanding what are the most important things likely to pop up? And so, for example, in all of our analog research, or research that's designed to mimic the realities of future spaceflight, we don't have evidence of like clinical levels of depression. So that wouldn't be a primary thing we would worry about. Now, would we still have a countermeasure available? Of course, but what we might worry about more is team dynamics, that when subgroups start to form, what can happen is, when you stop liking someone, it seems like, oh, well,
16:35 Speaker 02 so what? You don't like them. Well, when you live in a small space like that and you're doing very complicated feats, the problem is, is in our data, when we've observed subgrouping, or an isolate, which is one person kind of alienating themselves, or even being ostracized by the group, and not connecting as well with the rest of the group. That has detrimental effects on their ability to meet mission objectives. And so if you can't meet mission objectives, you know, why are you going? And including, you know, making sure you can have safe backup behaviors to keep that crew alive. And so we work very hard on thinking about how we are developing the team interventions and countermeasures of the future. We use standard things too, like a continuous learning and a team learning to debrief or
17:20 Speaker 02 teach themselves, you know, like what do we do well? What didn't we do well? What do we need to do in the future? That's still best practices, even if you're in a tin can. But the reality is we need more. And so we're looking at ways for if someone has a mental health challenge or a behavioral health challenge, if there is team dysfunction, how do we detect that? And then how do we empower the crew to be able to address that themselves because they're going to be autonomous on this long mission delay? And then we would like that as much as possible to be self-initiated. However, you know, there's strategies for when another person has to intervene too. And then at what point does mission control or something else, you know, begin to intervene?
18:04 Speaker 02 And so those are the exact types of research challenges that we're currently working on in the lab. So I can only kind of answer your question right now, but that is definitely what we're working on and, you know, have me back on the show three years from now. I'll tell you about all the things that we've developed.
18:18 Kim Mills? How do you balance the need for astronauts to be leaders but team players?
18:25 Speaker 02 That's a wonderful question, Kim, because astronauts, by the time they've gotten to where they are, are high achievers, right? So they usually don't suffer in their ability to lead. They've risen through the ranks, whether military or non-military, and been successful in their jobs and are high achieving people in general. And so the leadership capabilities are often there. But what's really important, particularly in spaceflight, but really in other teams, is that someone understands and knows when to lead, but also when to follow.
19:00 Speaker 02 And so it's really about can people also follow at the right time? And following doesn't mean being passive. Good followership is still using your critical thinking skills and pushing information up to the decision maker and pulling information so you can provide the right inputs. It's very active. You know, we have this like stereotype of like, oh, followers, just like a sheep following someone around. But when, when we talk about leadership followership in the astronaut context, we still want proactive, critical thinking, but we also want people who can acknowledge maybe on this particular problem, someone else is the primary expert. And so I'm going to allow them to take the lead.
19:43 Speaker 02 But when I have expertise that's relevant, I need to provide that or even be comfortable taking the lead. So yes, there'll probably be a commander and a crew that's, that's following. But that leadership followership and really being able to negotiate that role between and that role change between the two is really important for spaceflight. And I would actually argue a lot of teams and in, you know, that shared leadership component.
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21:07 Kim Mills? So you mentioned people back home being sort of a mitigating factor when astronauts start to feel whatever pressures, lonely, anxious, all of those things. How much time do you spend, assuming that you do, screening their families to make sure that the relationships that they have back home are solid and healthy?
21:28 Speaker 02 So that currently is not part of what we do, but as you're pointing out, making sure the support unit is strong is going to be critically important for these longer missions where someone is gone for a long period of time. And not only making sure that the family is on board and supported and that everybody has a shared expectation of what's happening, but some of our interventions we're working on is how do you keep the family involved in the story as it evolves? So especially when you have that communication delay. So we have research projects that are, for example, looking at VR capabilities and how you can have a shared experience with your family there. We have other work that we're starting to look at related to, you know, how can we
22:13 Speaker 02 encourage shared experiences and the type of communication that deepens relationships over time when you are separated at that long distance? And so we look at it at short communication delays like we're expecting for Artemis, but we also are starting to evolve some of our research for a Mars focus and how we'll support that. One thing we do right now on the International Space Station, the Behavioral Health and Performance Operational Group here, has specialists who actually partner with the family and help them with this journey. And that can really be helpful not only to the family unit, but back for the astronaut because they view the family as an important coping mechanism. But if they're too worried about their family and what's happening on Earth, it can also
22:55 Speaker 02 detract from their ability to do the hard and difficult work that they're doing on the space station. Because even though the space station is larger, like I mentioned, and isn't quite as extreme. As some of our, what we're planning for Mars, they are busy and work very hard in the International Space Station because there are so many science projects that they're supposed to execute and maintenance that needs to be done for the International Space Station. And so it might be still a little bit roomier than we're expecting for Mars, but it's still challenging. They still have to keep their eye on the ball. They're still going out and risking their lives on spacewalks. And so if they're worried about how their child's doing in school or, you know, whether or not their spouse or partner is coping well,
23:40 Speaker 02 that can really add to their stress, which is already significant. And so we really support the families with specialists who form a relationship with the family before they even leave and then partner with that family to help the mission to be a success for the astronaut and their unit, supportive unit at home.
24:00 Kim Mills? How do you plan enough redundancy to make the mission successful? So you've only got four people and say, one person is down for a month with illness or God forbid, somebody dies on the mission. How do you cover the work that they were doing?
24:17 Speaker 02 One of the things is sending redundancies in critical skills. So what would be mission ending, for example? And one of it would be if there was no physician or medical support. And so when we think about crew composition for something like a mission to Mars, it'll be important to not only have a physician or medical expert of some sorts, but also someone who, if that's not their primary expertise, are well-trained in those areas so they could step in. For example, if it's the physician that's sick. We're also developing technologies at NASA and with other commercial and university and different entities to do things like be able to provide just-in-time support training for things
25:01 Speaker 02 like giving an ultrasound, like doing a minor surgery. You might end up having to do it. And so, you know, how can we, if needed, train someone to do those things on a significant communication delay? And so So there's anything, there's a couple of different projects, but anything from like AI supports for medical interventions to really cool projects that do things like mimic a lack of gravity in environment for when you're performing a surgery. Because if you think about it, I mean, it'd be hard enough to to perform a surgery if you didn't know how to do one, but now you're in microgravity. So just to add in some more fun for that. So those are the complicated things that, yes, we need to keep the crew alive. Uh, we need critical redundancies and medical expertise.
25:46 Speaker 02 Um, and then, you know, we will evolve as our mission objectives evolve to what the other technical expertises are that need to be redundant.
25:55 Kim Mills? Now, you recently co-authored a paper that looked at how living in space affected astronauts' cognition on the International Space Station. What did you find and would you expect to find similar results for a Mars mission crew?
26:09 Speaker 02 This is a really significant study for us. Um, it was led by Dr. Sheena Dev in my lab and in our Behavioral Health and Performance Lab. Um, and what we did is we looked at six-month missions to the International Space Station and tracked cognitive change over time using a specially developed cognitive performance measure that we give called cognition. It looks at 10 different dimensions of cognitive performance. And there's actually really good news from that study, which is in low Earth orbit. So again, you're not exposed to that much radiation and some of the challenges we're expecting for future. What we saw was some slowing in some of the responses to processing speed tasks,
26:54 Speaker 02 visual working memory tasks and sustained attention early on in the mission, and some changes to risk-taking propensity. But what's interesting is the changes like processing speed, visual working memory, sustained attention. These are the types of changes that you might expect in stressful environments on Earth or when someone's sleep deprived on Earth. And so the good news is, we actually concluded that there's no evidence for a systematic decline in cognitive performance for astronauts on these six-month missions to the ISS. To your question in a second, but that is really important because one of the things we're focusing on is commercializing space.
27:33 Speaker 02 And we want space tourists and someday for everybody to have the opportunity to go to space, or at least a lot more people than go now. And so knowing that, hey, even astronauts who stay up in six-month missions to the ISS, you don't have to worry that you're, you know, going to have some cognitive decline because of that. And so that shouldn't be a concern. And so that's a great, like, starting place. But what we're going to also use this research for is baseline research. So our next goals are to go to the moon. That's going to be exposure to a lot more of the hazards of space. And so we'll be able to use, for people who are into statistics, like Bayesian approaches,
28:13 Speaker 02 where we can say, okay, here's what we know from the International Space Station, low Earth orbit. And then as we get astronaut crews who are going around the moon, we can update that to really characterize what's happening in cognition as we go beyond low Earth orbit to the moon and then someday beyond. But we can't answer your question yet. We do conduct analog research and we will be collecting data on the Artemis missions that will look at that. And those are always low sample. And so having this baseline for at least our best guess of where to start and then looking at deviations from that is going to be really powerful for us.
28:51 Kim Mills? Are the skills and characteristics for NASA astronauts different from those astronauts who are working on commercial flights?
29:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, so this goes back to when I said, you know, it depends on the type of mission. So you might have a Mars mission where you're two and a half years in isolation. Some of the private sector missions right now might be two to four days. Some even, you know, just go up and kind of come down. So those are going to require different profiles. It also will depend on what you are doing on the mission. So if you're expected to do research versus if you are just, you know, a space tourist and can decide what you want to do with your time. And so for each mission, you know, that needs to be considered.
29:40 Speaker 02 And then making sure people have the kind of minimum critical capabilities and competencies where they can succeed in a mission like that, so it's safe for everybody.
29:51 Kim Mills? Does the research that you're doing at NASA have any more practical applications on Earth?
29:58 Speaker 02 One of the things that I love about my job is what we do is difficult with our analog research, with our small sample research. So a lot of times, we're innovating methodologies alongside with better understanding human functioning and the psychology of people in extreme environments. So in a couple ways, one is we've had, we've innovated around different machine learning and computational models. The innovative themselves were the first of their kind and have made advances in those areas, which can be applied back to how we understand teamwork on Earth, among other things. But also, some of the research
30:37 Speaker 02 that NASA funds, for example, looking at how teams might debrief and be more effective. Those are used not only in the research, but in practice in areas like astronauts, but for people who work on oil rigs, or in a group living paper that we just published that has application for anyone who lives and works together, whether it's deployed military units, whether it's people on an oil rig, whether it's even, you know, going to summer camp and you want to think about, you know, when you're living together, you know, what are the fundamental skills needed for group living? And so, everything we do, you know, it has to be pioneering to conquer the challenges of spaceflight, but there's
31:19 Speaker 02 very little that we do that wouldn't have a lessons learned that can promote team effectiveness back on Earth. How we compose teams, how we support teams on Earth, how we monitor teams, as well as innovations and things like understanding cognitive performance. I think that it's really amazing, like, if you think about work today, 50 to 80% of an individual's day is spent collaborating in some way. And so, some of these novel things we're pushing to make teamwork in space better have direct implications for making our jobs better and helping us figure out how we can support better teamwork, whether virtually or in person, as most people's jobs are now.
32:02 Kim Mills? How did you wind up at NASA? You moved from academe to the space agency. How did that come about?
32:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, I loved being a professor. I came out of grad school and was really passionate about teaching and research and took my first position and really enjoyed my time there with my colleagues. And just like a good academic position would be with, you know, helping me to become a researcher in the areas that I wanted to explore, having that academic freedom component. But one of the things I researched extensively was team composition, or how combinations of team members work together. And I had published quite a bit on that. I have a meta-analysis, I have two meta-analyses on that. I have other papers on that as well in research. And then NASA actually reached out when they first started thinking about Mars stuff
32:53 Speaker 02 and said, "We're kind of consulting the leading researchers in this area, and we want your input on, you know, how do you compose a crew that'll go to Mars someday?" And that was an interesting question, right? It's like, okay, that's not what I thought would be in my inbox today. Like, apparently NASA's going to Mars, and they'd like to know what combination of people were best. But I did two smaller studies with NASA, and then eventually had some larger grants continuing as a professor that were funded by NASA. And then just over time, it just really became my favorite part of my day. I think personally that becoming an interplanetary species is one of the most important things we can do for humankind.
33:36 Speaker 02 And so I thought, well, I do love my position and my colleagues and the students, but I'm really passionate about this. And do I start this at 5 o'clock after I'm done teaching? And, you know, doing service stuff all day? Or should I just start it at 8 a.m.? It's exciting because of the mission of becoming, you know, successfully landing humans on Mars someday. Also exciting because it is so intellectually difficult. And I love that. That gets me up in the morning of saying, "How do we even research making this happen? Let alone getting there." It's like, how do you even figure out what you need to get there? And so maybe eight or 10 years ago, I published a piece on that.
34:19 Kim Mills? I love this idea, though, of sending equipment or supplies out ahead. You know, like, how am I going to find that 7-Eleven in space? Where is that thing that, you know, we really need? I mean, how, that's going to be pretty challenging.
34:34 Speaker 02 As you mentioned, I'm a psychologist, but we partner closely. I was just in an hour and a half meeting with our food scientist right before I jumped on your podcast. And so, everything we do here is multidisciplinary. You know, we want to know how food we send changes performance, changes cognition. Does it? You know, do we have wiggle room on the food? What's our minimum we can send? I mean, it's complicated, right? Every gram is important in a payload. And so, everything has to be carefully thought through of, you know, I might have the most fantastic VR behavioral health intervention, but if I don't even have the payload to send the VR device, it doesn't do me any good.
35:17 Speaker 02 And so, understanding, is that more important than a little more food? That's a hard question, right? And that's the questions we grapple with because we know that we need people who are psychologically ready to perform as individuals, to perform as teams, to be able to maintain their wellness, to do things like two hours of exercise a day just to keep their bones from losing too much density and to keep their muscles from atrophying in a lower no-gravity environment. And so, like, we know they have to do all these things, but making those trades is what's fundamentally, I think, the most challenging things because we don't have the ability to send whatever we want and we don't have the ability to make whatever we want.
36:01 Speaker 02 So, we have to just figure out what's going to be there to make it work, like you're pointing out.
36:06 Kim Mills? Last question. What's next for your research lab? And what are the big priorities? How do you decide what you need to do next?
36:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, we have maybe, it depends how you count them, but probably over 25 projects. We're a very busy lab now. We have different priorities. We always just follow along with mission agency priorities. So, you know, we're consistent with that. But then what we do is, depending on what the agency is prioritizing, what are the unsolved challenges related to making that happen? So, for example, when we're talking about returning to the moon and creating a sustained presence on the moon, one of the things that's extremely difficult about that is the number of extravehicular activities that will have to be done. It is an unprecedented amount compared to what we've done historically. And so we are currently starting projects
36:57 Speaker 02 that ask the fundamental question of how much can we push people physically and psychologically with repeated extravehicular activities? Can you do six-hour EVAs every other day? And I'm sorry, an extravehicular activity, a spacewalk, right? They're challenging, they're physically demanding, they're psychologically demanding, they're cognitively tasking. And right now, you have a ramp-up period where the person prepares for it, then they, you know, go on the EVA, then they can come back and have some downtime. They rarely would be in a circumstance where they'd have to do it six hours and then the next, you know, two days later, six hours again. So a lot of our high-priority research right now
37:42 Speaker 02 is focused on optimizing cognitive and physical performance on those extravehicular activities so we can actually create a sustained presence on the moon. Those are some of our big, current, starting projects right now. And then that will be used to inform schedulers and mission planners so they can say, okay, if there's too much cognitive fatigue after a six-hour EVA, I can't put these types of tasks towards the end of it because there's too many errors, there's too many safety issues. And so keeping the crew safe, meeting as many objectives as we can, that'd be an example. You know, as our agency is also focused on going to Mars someday. And so we're also really starting to work on...
38:28 Speaker 02 We've done some work now characterizing the risks. And so we're now really starting to develop countermeasures. And so we are starting in our new work, really specifically the tech development, the countermeasure development to mitigate the risks we see. Like declines in social support over time is one of the things we just published actually about two weeks ago. So, yeah.
38:51 Kim Mills? Well, I want to thank you for joining me. This is amazing work that you're doing and thank you for doing it. I look forward to seeing the day when we actually go back to the moon and make our way to Mars.
39:01 Speaker 02 Wouldn't be wonderful. Well, thank you for having me, Kim.
39:05 Kim Mills? You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For those of you who want to know more about psychology and the work of APA, you can join us as a supporter. You don't have to be a psychologist. The benefits include a subscription to our award-winning magazine, Monitor on Psychology, as well as discounts on books and other publications. So if psychology is your passion, or you just want to know more about the science, you can become a supporter by visiting at.apa.org/speaking. That's at.apa.org/speaking. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts,
39:50 Kim Mills? you can email us at [email protected] . Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.
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