Human Factors in Space Exploration: Opportunities for International and Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This panel is a follow-up of last year’s talk at the opening session of the 10th anniversary MIDI conference. Last year was also the 10th anniversary of Polish membership in the European Space Agency. Therefore, during the special panel Challenges and Opportunities in Space Exploration using eXtended Reality we opened discussion within the broader group of researchers and professionals, including representatives from ESA EAC, XR Lab, Polish Space Agency (POLSA), Polish Ministry of Sciences and Education, Space Research Center of Polish Academy of Sciences, and the APLHA-XR research framework team of HASE (Human Aspects of Science and Engineering) research network by Living Lab Kobo, including the VR Lab Institute of Psychology Polish Academy of Sciences, EC Lab SWPS University, LIT National Information Processing Institute, and XR Center Polish Academy of Information Technologies.

This time we would like to focus on certain aspects of human factors in space exploration based on opportunities and challenges that stem from our recent research endeavors and plans within ALPHA-XR initiative. This initiative employs a multimodal data-driven approach utilising new technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR, VR) which comprise the eXtended Reality (XR) continuum.

During last year’s discussion it was clear that space exploration, as one of the main pillars of space research and in addition to Earth observation, is also one of the most challenging and exciting areas of research in general. This is mainly due to the strong interdisciplinarity and potential toward practical implementation beyond the space research area. Its importance is reflected in the strategies of space agencies, including NASA and ESA. NASA’s vision is to explore the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all¹¹1https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/why-go-to-space/, and according to its mission, NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery²²2https://www.nasa.gov/about/.

The importance of space exploration is also reflected in the strategy of the European Space Agency (ESA). In particular, the 2014 Resolution on Europe’s space exploration strategy adopted at the Ministerial level of the ESA Council paved the way for the evolution of successful space cooperation in Europe. It is based on more than half a century of previous experience in the field to maintain Europe (and the ESA in particular) as one of the world leaders within the area of space science, Earth observation, space exploration, and related technology. Based on that, The European Exploration Envelope Programme(E3P) was created in 2016 to implement the European space exploration strategy. The E3P brought together all ESA exploration activities in a single program. To underline the importance of space exploration and European ambitions in this area, the E3P program was rebranded in 2021 as Terrae Novae (New Worlds) and followed by Terrae Novae 2030+ Strategy Roadmap³³3$esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/HRE/Terrae\_Novae\_2030+strategy\_roadmap.pdf$ released in 2022. According to the official documentation of the strategy, the mission of the Terrae Novae program is to lead the human journey of Europe to the solar system using robots as precursors and scouts, and to return the benefits of exploration back to society. As an ambitious exploration vision for Europe, it comprises of threefold objectives related to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Moon and Mars, namely:

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  to create new opportunities in low Earth Orbit for a sustained European presence after the International Space Station,

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  to enable the first European to explore the Moon’s surface by 2030 as a step towards sustainable lunar exploration in the 2030’s, and

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  to prepare the horizon goal of Europe being part of the first human mission to Mars.

According to the official documentation, this strategic vision evokes the spirit of new discoveries, new ambitions, new science, new inspiration, and new challenges. It symbolizes the constant quest for technological, process, and procurement innovations that result in new and better ways to deliver the program. It also reflects the aspiration to actively reach out to new partners beyond the space sector and expand the space ecosystem to the commercial sphere.

Having in mind strategic plans at the international level, as well as the growing importance of space research in Poland, in 2022 we established a proposal towards a sustainable XR-based Space Exploration Research Framework called ALPHA-XR. It serves as a new long-term cooperation framework for transdisciplinary research that fits in the Strategic Innovation Area of Human and Robotic Exploration, part of Terrae Novae program. Based on our previous experience as a HASE research initiative, the primary goal of ALPHA-XR was to develop and utilise a data-driven approach to immersive research environments for evidence-based transdisciplinary studies in ICE (Isolation, Confinement, Extreme) conditions, with broad field of scientific and practical applications including:

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  XR-based research in ICE condition,

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  XR-based interventions and training in ICE condition,

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  XR-supported communication and cooperation including robotic interactions.

The assumptions of the APLHA-XR framework (alpha.xrlab.pl) were presented and discussed with representatives of POLSA and the Polish Ministry of Science as well as other collaborating institutions, including the ESA EAC, XR Lab, and nvLab Lodz Film School and served also as a canvas for last year’s MIDI 2022 opening panel discussion. The above-mentioned areas of ALPHA-XR were also a foundation of our contribution to the ESA Topical Team on Space Analogs and Human Performance. Based on the proposal during the last two years, we have conducted some exploratory research and studies, including manned space simulations (fig. 1) using mixed research methods and multimodal data that included psychophysiological data coupled with data from validated questionnaires and ecological momentary assessment acquired in controlled, ecologically valid conditions supported by the use of the mixed reality continuum, including real and virtual immersive environments (fig. 2). As we mentioned before, the current MIDI 2023 discussion panel is a follow-up of the open discussion on human factors in space exploration that we started last year at the conference.

During the panel, we will discuss the recent advancements of our research collaboration network on human factors in space exploration that stem from our ALPHA-XR framework proposal. According to the proposal, the research activities were conducted by HASE group core labs (XRC PJAIT, EC Lab USWPS, VR Lab IP PAS, and LIT NIPI) in collaboration with other teams and institutions, including ESA EAC XR Lab, nvLab Lodz Film School, as well as ESA Topical Team Space Analogs and Human Performance.

Our panel discussion last year took place the day after the successful landing of the Orion module on the Artemis 1 space mission - one of the cornerstones of returning humans to the Moon more than half a century since the last Apollo landing. This was an example of direct evidence that the above-mentioned strategic plans and roadmaps are not just theoretical outlines repeatedly postponed in time, but rather a real frame of reference for international and interdisciplinary cooperation that may lead to reestablish human presence on the Moon in upcoming years. Therefore, various efforts towards strengthening the capacity of human factors research, intervention, and training aspects of space exploration become even more relevant. It is even more important than decades ago in the Apollo era, when crew members had military service backgrounds, predominantly as former pilots. On the contrary, in the Artemis program, the crew consists mainly of scientists or professionals without years of special military training or experience, making matters related to long-term isolated manned space missions even more challenging than those of decades ago.

Although there is a tremendous body of knowledge gathered in various fields and disciplines concerning different aspects related to space missions, there is still room for new research and bridging the gap in interdisciplinary collaboration. Therefore, we are pleased that our recent endeavors within the ALPHA-XR research framework allowed us to organize a simulated isolation analog lunar mission (fig. 1). This allowed us to conduct a series of studies and subsequent research activities that shed additional light on some aspects related to human performance in isolation related to well-being [6], effective communication [10] and rapid prototyping [11] as well as other related aspects such as conducting unsupervised XR-based studies [3].

For better understanding of our recent research findings and publications, including promising application of IVR, as well as certain limitations and shortcomings of analog habitat missions, it is important to bring some context to our discussion of isolation studies. In particular, why they are performed in the specific way and what the implications are, both positive (that should be the subject of further development) and negative (that might or should be mitigated).

As mentioned above, one of the crucial challenges of human factors in space exploration is to determine the key variables that can have negative effects of spaceflight and influence the crew. Although there is a body of research and knowledge on various negative aspects of spaceflight, including gravity or radiation, gained both in space and ground-based facilities together with some well-known medical counterparts, a better understanding of the psychological nature of long-term isolation is needed[1]. This is crucial not only because of the above-mentioned changes in team composition compared to the Apollo program but also because the manned missions planned within the Artemis program and beyond, that is, for Moon and Mars, will last longer than previous Apollo missions (weeks and months/years vs. days). On the other side, they will also differ from previous long-term studies on orbital stations, namely the ISS, because of the different conditions such as Earth proximity or available space for the crew. Therefore, in line with the findings of ESA Topical Team Space Analogs and Human Performance, one of the fundamentals of our ALPHA-XR framework was established to determine key factors related to vital aspects of long-term manned missions, including sensory deprivation and social isolation. In particular, those factors can negatively affect executive and attentional functioning and therefore negatively impact skills, performance, efficiency, as well as well-being at both individual and crew level.

To identify those factors, as well as methods to counteract negative effects, long-term observation and measurements are needed. Furthermore, to obtain the best results, research studies must be conducted under ecologically valid conditions, that is, a setting as similar as possible to daily routines in close proximity to the natural environment[4]. This means that the experimental study setup should reflect as much as possible the natural conditions of forthcoming long-term lunar manned missions. The best environment for conducting experimental studies is research laboratories. However, as we stated in our ALPHA-XR proposal, regular laboratory studies or training routines seem insufficient to induce proper levels of both social and individual factors in order to measure their interaction with, for example, executive and attentional functions that may influence individual and crew skills and performance as well as well-being. Therefore, to better prepare for real missions in space conditions, the research community is using special terrestrial facilities, called analog habitats. Some of them are part of official ground-based facilities of space agencies, but there are also a number of commercial sites that allow the organization of such simulated missions[2]. Therefore, analog missions can serve as a useful experimental study vessel for the research community as a best approximation in terms of isolation factors studies. In addition to some aforementioned evident limitations, i.e. gravity or radiation, they provide an opportunity for conducting long-term isolation studies.

However, in regard to regular laboratory studies, such research activities, due to the nature of isolation and confinement, are to be conducted in an unsupervised approach. Among many limitations of such analog experiments, one prominent and fundamental restriction refers to methods and tools of measurement of various aspects of mental state of analog astronauts. In particular, as we mentioned, if we are interested in investigating participants’ executive functioning, that is, their executive processes, like inhibition, updating of working memory, as well as attentional functions, we need to find proper ways of measurement in real-time, which is also in with the discussion of ESA Topical Team Space Analog and Human Performance that we contributed recently. The most established methods of measurement actually did not change for decades, besides moving from paper questionnaires towards their digital counterparts. In particular, those well-established self-reported tests, scales, and research protocols are not suitable for real-time measurement. Therefore, there is a chance to use new approaches derived from ecologically valid psychological laboratory studies, such as EMA (ecological momentary assessment), which involves repeated sampling of subjects’ current behaviors and experiences in real time under natural conditions [9, 7]. However, based on our experience on the simulated mission, we know that the everyday routines of the crew, such as laboratory experiments or EVAs (extravehicular activities; fig. 4), which are as important to provide ecological conditions as analog habitat environments, are so tedious and time-consuming that even the modern momentary assessment approach that we used (namely mobile applications instead of traditional paper forms) were prone to be omitted due to the crew’s workload and responsibilities on site. Therefore, there is a need to further investigate the transition from active forms of measurements, that is, the forms that engage the crew, towards passive methods and tools, based on sensors and intelligent environment (IoT). However, this poses another challenge for the integration of multimodal data, including self-reported, psychological, and environmental or infrastructure-based measurements.

This leads to another research case study on IVR-based interventions during the analog mission[6], making active use of multimodal data gathering, including self-reported and psychophysiological data. Our case study proved that we may alleviate some negative factors, namely asthenia, towards increasing the well-being of the crew using artistic IVR experience. Based on our previous experience in such multimodal data-driven environments[8, 5] we conducted an experiment that unveiled the potential of artistic immersive experiences in favor of already well-established case studies on experiences based on nature exposed in VR. According to our findings, we can assert that artistic IVR experiences, particularly those that are interactive, demonstrate enhanced effectiveness in fostering well-being compared to traditional nature-based VR interventions. This enhancement suggests a unique potential for artistic IVR in impacting psychological outcomes, although the underlying mechanisms driving this effectiveness warrant further investigation. This is primarily attributed to the limitations inherent in our study, such as the small sample size characteristic of isolation studies in analog habitats. However, the use of XR-continuum-based solutions like IVR is still promising for overcoming the limitations of small-samples, one-shot studies, because the same setting may be used repeatedly in subsequent experiments in various locations, which is in line with our contribution to ESA Topical Team as well as outcome from the mentioned workshop on unsupervised condition[3].

Moreover, our IVR-based artistic intervention also unveiled some other shortcomings such as the complex and time-consuming process of creating such environments which also needs interdisciplinary collaboration. However, recent advances in generative AI also give some promising directions in this area for future research. Another interesting finding of ALPHA-XR is related to IVR-based systems application to the area of facilitating daily crew duties, namely towards effective communication between the crew and mission control [10], as well as some exploratory insights on rapid prototyping in terms of in-community experience of 3D printing in isolated, aiming for self-sufficiency[11]. Moreover, based on our experience gained through the above research and activities in lunar habitat, we also organized follow-up activities, e.g space hackathon on participatory design of rapid prototyping solutions for the analog astronauts or even the future real space missions (fig. 3). Moreover thanks to the contacts and discussion in the broader circle of space researchers, including ESA EAC and ESTEC, another promising research area emerged. This was related to investigating XR-based immersive environments in lowering barriers towards space research facilities, including orbital equipment to broader community of researchers without previous experience in that area of conducting their research

To wrap up this year’s panel discussion we would like to stress that exploring human factors in space exploration is an exciting yet challenging activity. Our exploratory research, based on extensive research of interdisciplinary cooperation in various fields, proves that there are some promising ways to overcome the current challenges in isolation and confinement simulated studies. However, they are also accompanied by specific challenges that yet may be overcome. This is the course of our current and planned research, that we hope to discuss at the next MIDI conference.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the EEA Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 grant no. 2019/35/HS6/03166 (development of nature virtual environment).