Off-world mental health: considerations for the design of wellbeing supportive technologies for deep space exploration

Abstract

During future long duration space exploration missions, humans will be exposed to combinations of extreme physical, psychological and interpersonal demands. These demands create risks for safety, performance, health, and wellbeing of both individuals and crew. The communication latency in deep space means that explorers will increasingly have to operate independently and take responsibility for their own self-care and self-management. At present, several research programmes are focused on developing and testing digital technologies and countermeasures that support the effective functioning of deep space crews. Although promising, these initiatives have been stimulated mostly by technological opportunity rather than cogent theory. In this perspective, we argue that digital technologies developed for spaceflight should be informed by wellbeing supportive design principles and be cognisant of broader conversations around the development and use of digital health applications, especially pertaining to issues of autonomy, privacy and trust. These issues are important for designing potentially mission critical health technologies and may be determining factors in the safe and successful completion of future off-world endeavours.

The future potential of virtual reality countermeasures for maintaining behavioural health during long duration space exploration

“…Several researchers have commented on the appropriateness and design of monitoring tools, highlighting that they need to feel acceptable to crew (Goemaere et al, 2019); transparent about reasons behind recommendations (Smith et al, 2023); and primarily for crew use rather than mission control (Johannes and van Baarsen, 2020). Some astronauts dislike psychological monitoring and may even attempt to give false results (Slack et al, 2016), likely because poor scores can threaten their careers (Kanas and Manzey, 2008).…”