We provided 3 educational sessions to the scientists, engineers and support personnel working on the Phoenix Mars Lander project in the week prior to the mission. During those 1-hour sessions, our scientific team provided information on sleep, circadian rhythms and appropriate countermeasures to facilitate entrainment to a Mars sol schedule and to maximize alertness and performance during work hours.

Investigators provided a blue light box to research subjects as well as instructions for when to seek and avoid light to facilitate entrainment to the Mars sol schedule. Ocular light exposure of a specific narrowband wavelength (±30 nm half-peak bandwidths) was encouraged using a light delivery system developed by Apollo Light Systems Inc., (American Fork, UT).

Research subjects continuously wore actigraphs on their wrists to monitor sleep and light exposure. They completed daily logs indicating work times and the fatigue countermeasures they used, and provided subjective evaluations of sleep and alertness. Subjects also accomplished daily performance testing and completed 48-hour urine collections about every two weeks to permit analysis of a melatonin conjugate to estimate circadian timing.

Subjects wore a Motionlogger (Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc., Ardsley, NY) on their wrists throughout the study period to provide sleep/wake activity and light exposure information. Each subject was given a personal digital assistant (PDA; Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc., Ardsley, NY) that contained two programs: a sleep-work log that was completed each day and a 5-minute version of the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT)/ Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) that was completed twice per day. Subjects were requested to complete the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics (ANAM4) at the beginning and end of each work shift. The ANAM battery also included a mood scale.

Nineteen subjects completed the study, although data collection was abbreviated in some subjects who traveled throughout the data collection period. The Mars Phoenix Lander project provided an operational opportunity, in a Mars Time Analog, to evaluate countermeasures in a real-time, field setting.

The proposed study will examine both Phoenix Mars Lander controllers who work on a Mars sol schedule and those who work on a traditional Earth sol schedule. Major outcome measures include sleep duration (objective evaluation via actigraphy), subjective alertness (collected via daily log) and performance (evaluated with the Psychomotor Vigilance Task and other embedded and/or unobtrusive performance measures). The results of this countermeasure evaluation will benefit other operational NASA missions,such as Constellation, and also take advantage of an operational analog environment to inform gaps in knowledge of the risks of cognitive problems due to fatigue and other aspects during spaceflight.

[Ed. note: added to Task Book in Dec 2009]