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Project Title:  Communication Delays in Cislunar Space: A Lab Study Examining Team Risk Concerns Reduce
Images: icon  Fiscal Year: FY 2024 
Division: Human Research 
Research Discipline/Element:
HRP HFBP:Human Factors & Behavioral Performance (IRP Rev H)
Start Date: 02/01/2024  
End Date: 04/30/2025  
Task Last Updated: 09/26/2024 
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Principal Investigator/Affiliation:   Landon, Lauren Blackwell Ph.D. / KBR/NASA Johnson Space Center 
Address:  2101 NASA Parkway B21 
 
Houston , TX 77058 
Email: lauren.landon@nasa.gov  
Phone: 281-483-9247  
Congressional District: 36 
Web:  
Organization Type: NASA CENTER 
Organization Name: KBR/NASA Johnson Space Center 
Joint Agency:  
Comments:  
Co-Investigator(s)
Affiliation: 
Bell, Suzanne  Ph.D. NASA Johnson Space Center 
Project Information: Grant/Contract No. Directed Research 
Responsible Center: NASA JSC 
Grant Monitor: Whitmire, Alexandra  
Center Contact:  
alexandra.m.whitmire@nasa.gov 
Unique ID: 16124 
Solicitation / Funding Source: Directed Research 
Grant/Contract No.: Directed Research 
Project Type: Ground 
Flight Program:  
TechPort: No 
No. of Post Docs:  
No. of PhD Candidates:  
No. of Master's Candidates:  
No. of Bachelor's Candidates:  
No. of PhD Degrees:  
No. of Master's Degrees:  
No. of Bachelor's Degrees:  
Human Research Program Elements: (1) HFBP:Human Factors & Behavioral Performance (IRP Rev H)
Human Research Program Risks: (1) BMed:Risk of Adverse Cognitive or Behavioral Conditions and Psychiatric Disorders
(2) HSIA:Risk of Adverse Outcomes Due to Inadequate Human Systems Integration Architecture
(3) Team:Risk of Performance and Behavioral Health Decrements Due to Inadequate Cooperation, Coordination, Communication, and Psychosocial Adaptation within a Team
Human Research Program Gaps: (1) BMed-106:Given increasing Earth independent long-duration missions with resulting communications delays, how do we maintain personal relations / interactions (family, friends and colleagues) and mitigate effects on astronauts’ behavioral health and performance during exploration class missions?
(2) BMed-108:Given each crewmember will experience multiple spaceflight hazards simultaneously, we need to identify and characterize the potential additive, antagonistic, or synergistic impacts of multiple stressors (e.g., space radiation, altered gravity, isolation, altered immune, altered sleep) on crew health and/or CNS/ cognitive functioning to develop threshold limits and validate countermeasures for any identified adverse crew health and/or operationally-relevant performance outcomes.
(3) HSIA-101:We need to identify the Human Systems Integration (HSI) – relevant crew health and performance outcomes, measures, and metrics, needed to characterize and mitigate risk, for future exploration missions.
(4) HSIA-301:We need to determine the on-board, intelligent systems that will support crew health and performance, and we need to establish the thresholds that will define how these systems should be implemented (including in-mission and at landing).
(5) HSIA-401:We need to determine how HSI can be applied in the vehicle/habitat and computer interface Design Phase to mitigate potential decrements in operationally-relevant performance (e.g. problem-solving, execution procedures), during increasingly earth-independent, future exploration missions (including in-mission and at landing).
(6) HSIA-501:We need to determine how HSI will be used in the development of dynamic and adaptive mission procedures and processes, to mitigate individual and team performance decrements during increasingly earth-independent, future exploration missions (including in-mission and at landing).
(7) Team-101:We need to understand the key threats, indicators, and evolution of the team throughout its life cycle for shifting autonomy and interface with automation in increasingly earth independent, long duration exploration missions.
(8) Team-105:We need to identify a set of countermeasures to support team function and enable multiple distributed teams to manage shifting levels of autonomy for all phases of increasingly earth independent, long duration exploration missions.
(9) Team-106:We need to identify how multiple risks (e.g., BMed, HSIA, Sleep) may increase or buffer Team risk, with potential for integrated, synergistic impact on Team performance and functioning during shifting levels of autonomy for all phases of increasingly earth independent, long duration exploration missions.
Task Description: Astronauts on lunar missions will maintain communications with ground support through a communications network that is expected to have communication (comm) delays. While at this time, the exact range of these delays are currently unknown, they seem to be in the range of 2 seconds to 10 seconds one-way, but may vary depending on the criticality of the type of communication at hand. Unfortunately, there is a lack of data testing the effects of 2-10 second one-way comm delays. The Apollo missions space-to-ground audio comm delay was 1.5s one-way, but future missions will use different systems, and current NASA experts project longer delays as we move beyond low Earth orbit.

While recent analog studies through the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) have evaluated comm delay effects on performance, much of this work has been completed in context of a Mars mission with comm delay on the order of minutes, not seconds. In these past comm delay studies, findings have shown detrimental effects on individual well-being and performance, team and multi-team cohesion and performance, and family connectedness. Effects have been found across a range of tasks (i.e., nominal, maintenance, extravehicular activities (EVAs), troubleshooting, contingency, and medical/emergency), but again, not investigated at a lunar comm delay.

NASA experts have also stated that current countermeasures will not be effective in beyond low Earth orbit (BLEO); for example, the VSee videoconferencing software used for private medical conferences does not work with current projected comm delay latencies, and remote guidance can be significantly more difficult. The current engineering paradigm relies on ground expertise and real-time communication for most analysis and repair activities, which will not be possible with lunar operations. Later Artemis missions will involve many planned team tasks that are dangerous and complex, such as EVAs, which are currently closely monitored and coordinated from Earth. Longer duration lunar missions may also see cumulative effects of comm delay frustrations; and comm quality declines disrupt shared mental models and space-to-ground cohesion. However, we do not understand where “breaking points” exist for different space-to-ground team operations and when well-being and team cohesion will be significantly decremented. It is critical we examine the impact of lunar comm delays on team performance and cohesion as the Artemis missions take us back to the Moon.

Rationale for HRP Directed Research: Results from this assessment will be used to help set the likely range of lunar comm delay studied in the NASA Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) Campaign 8. Given that HERA Campaign 8 planning will need to be defined in about 15 months, there is not enough time to solicit and complete this pre-cursor effort. As a result, HFBP is initiating this task as a directed task.

Research Impact/Earth Benefits:

Task Progress & Bibliography Information FY2024 
Task Progress: New Project for FY2024

Bibliography: Description: (Last Updated: 09/11/2024) 

Show Cumulative Bibliography
 
 None in FY 2024