AI Insight
This study used proximity sensors worn by Antarctic research station crew members during two 10-14 month winter-over missions to objectively measure crew cohesion as an analog for long-duration space missions. The sensors recorded when crew members were in close physical proximity to each other, revealing that crew cohesion decreased over time as individuals spent more time alone, with the first year's crew showing higher overall cohesion than the second year's crew. This method provides an unobtrusive alternative to traditional surveys and video analysis for monitoring crew interactions in isolated, confined, and extreme environments.
Why it matters
The findings offer a practical, objective method to monitor astronaut crew dynamics during long-duration space missions without relying on self-reports or labor-intensive video analysis. Early detection of crew withdrawal could enable timely interventions to maintain team cohesion and mental health, which are critical for mission success and crew wellbeing during multi-year deep space exploration missions.
Understand the Science
Astronauts will spend prolonged periods in an isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) spaceflight environment on long-duration space exploration missions. Continuous confinement in close quarters with a few crewmembers will require high levels of crew cohesion to promote mission success and crewmember wellbeing. In the past, the most common measure of crew cohesion were surveys, which tend to have high participant bias. More recently, researchers have analyzed video recordings that provide detailed proximity information but are time consuming to score and prone to interobserver bias. Here, we measured crewmember proximity as a surrogate measure of crew cohesion with proximity sensors worn by crewmembers during two Antarctic 10–14 months winter-over missions (N = 13 in 2015 and N = 12 in 2016). These sensors recorded instances of crewmembers being close in distance to each other, allowing for the identification of trends in crewmember interactions and crewmember withdrawal. We demonstrate that proximity is an unobtrusive, objective, and easy to obtain surrogate measure for crew cohesion that reveals systematic changes with time in mission. This includes a decrease in crew cohesion resulting from more time spent alone as each mission progressed, and higher average crew cohesion scores in Year 1 than in Year 2. Findings from this study could be used to monitor sudden or gradual withdrawal from other crewmembers and provide insights unobtrusively on crew cohesion without compromising crew autonomy.