Preparing Astronauts For The Loneliness Of A Mars Mission

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow. NASA is getting ready to send humans to Mars. And although the launch date has been pushed back throughout the years, the agency says it wants to get there in the 2030. And it has a lot on its to-do list. For example, NASA needs to build new rockets, new living spaces, spacesuits, radiation shielding, just to name a few.

But one of the biggest challenges is not the engineering, but the mental health of the astronauts. Can all of the crew members get along with each other and stay alive over the course of three years in tight quarters and unforgiving environments? How will they cope with being separated from their families and friends for so long? And what lessons can they learn from astronauts who’ve lived for months on the International Space Station, and from our own experience of isolation during the pandemic?

A new documentary explores all these questions and more. It’s called The Longest Goodbye. It’s out today, March 8. And it dives into NASA’s Human Factors Program, a group of psychologists who are trying to figure out the best way to preserve astronauts’ mental health on a long and demanding mission away from their families.

JOSIAH COLEMAN: It was a really cold morning. I remember they’re counting down. And then as soon as it lifts off, you can feel it in your chest. My mom is not on the planet. She’s really gone.

CADY COLEMAN: We all start wondering if we’re doing the right thing. Should I have been on this mission? Should I have left my family back there? And that can lead to devastating psychological effects.

IRA FLATOW: Sci-fi producer and host of our podcast, Universe of Art, D. Peterschmidt, spoke to the film’s director, Ido Mizrahy, and one of its featured astronauts, Cady Coleman, who’s lived on the Space Station, about the challenges that the longest goodbye presents.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: NASA has a lot of problems to solve before going to Mars. But the problem that captivated director, Ido Mizrahy, most was not the engineering challenges, but how the astronauts would cope with being separated from the rest of humanity.

IDO MIZRAHY: I found it amazing how kind of inadvertently, NASA became this loneliness laboratory in the middle of what then became a loneliness pandemic. It was just a crazy sort of accident.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: When NASA has embarked on ambitious missions in the past, they’ve had to develop a lot of new tech to make them happen. Those discoveries are then passed down to the public. And we can thank NASA for the Velcro and our clothing, the tiny cameras in our phones, and the technology that makes CAT scans possible. And now, as the surgeon general has stated, that we’re in a loneliness epidemic, maybe the public can get new insight on isolation from the Space Agency’s research.

IDO MIZRAHY: Here’s a team that’s trying to solve isolation in space. But wait a minute, it’s actually for all of us.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: And trying to figure out the best way to build a team of astronauts who can complete and survive a grueling three year mission is no small feat, especially where real-time communication won’t be an option as the crew gets farther and farther away from Earth.

IDO MIZRAHY: Every protocol possible needs to be automated and figured out. So many things have to be simulated. And the kind of autonomous mission that it becomes where these four or six people need to cover so many different expertise, right? So like, who do you send also? Do you send someone who’s a doctor and a geologist? Because you want to get all that science done, but you also need to have these expertise that allow them to take care of themselves.

So how many professions can four people contain, basically? And then also find the four or six people who make for the right team, you know? So how do you test that? And how can you simulate that in advance is what’s on Dr. Holland’s mind.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: Here’s Dr. Al Holland, an applied psychologist at NASA’s Human Factors Division in a clip from the movie.

AL HOLLAND: You look for the things that make a difference in a much, much longer mission, a team player, good communicator, has good judgment.

[WATER SPLASHING]

Has a history of living successfully in small groups, particularly under extreme conditions, because when we ask them to spend three years on a mission to a planet that’s a long way out on that tether, we’ll see a gradual degradation of the environment.

IDO MIZRAHY: That makes for a really fascinating challenge that’s new and they’re never going to be able to totally predict what’s going to happen.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: Someone who has some idea of how this could play out is Cady Coleman, a former NASA astronaut and Air Force Colonel.

CADY COLEMAN: In our work, in our travels, and our training, we spent so much time away from our families. And my phrase is practicing bleeding.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: Meaning, she knows a journey like this is going to hurt. So how does she prepare? Cady’s completed two space shuttle missions in a six month stay on the International Space Station– all told, more than 180 days in space. She also has a husband and a son. And that son was in the fourth grade when she went up to live on the Space Station in 2010. NASA set up videoconference systems between the astronauts and their families so they could keep in touch. Here’s a clip of Cady playing tic-tac-toe with her son while she’s in space.

CADY COLEMAN: If you loved me more, you’d let me win. You know, I’m in space and lonely. If you love me, you let me win tic-tac-toe.

JOSIAH COLEMAN: OK. Hold on. I’ll go first this time.

CADY COLEMAN: And I miss you guys a ton. And I don’t know sort of hard knowing it’s snowy Sunday there, it’s all cozy, and maybe you guys even have a fire in the fireplace. And it’s hard not to be there.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: And when her son acted out at school partially because his mom was away, she couldn’t be there to help out. Cady hadn’t seen those video calls until the movie’s premiere at Sundance.

CADY COLEMAN: For me, you know, it’s hard to see in black and white the mom that could not be there, maybe could have smoothed things out a little bit more if she was. It was hard.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: Here’s Dr. Holland again.

AL HOLLAND: This is an environment in which things are moving very rapidly. And so we have to maximize the connectivity during that physical separation, because crew members’ connection with the family is a critical piece of sustenance for them. A mission to Mars will amplify that, because the sense of distance, the sense of separation is much more powerful.

CADY COLEMAN: So it’s a very hard problem. And they’re going about it in very creative ways I think.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: NASA’s been working with outside behavioral experts to figure out new ways to deal with long-term isolation. They’re currently experimenting with virtual reality to immerse astronauts in calming nature environments or so they can interact with an avatar of their spouse. They’re also working with IBM on a robotic AI companion called Simon, a foot wide sphere with a screen that displays a simple face that can change expressions. It gets around the Space Station by blowing up puffs of air. And Simon serves double duty acting as an information resource and as a companion that astronauts can confide in for psychological help.

And something I was surprised by was how reticent some astronauts are about sharing an accurate picture of their mental health with their psychologist while in space. Psychologists have been doing this with astronauts for a while on the Space Station. But when you’re traveling to Mars where real-time communication is impossible, how could an AI companion change that? Here’s a clip from the film with astronaut, Matthias Maurer, talking about his experience with Simon on the Space Station.

MATTHIAS MAURER: But can I trust Simon? If I plug-in cables and Simon says like, Matthias, the last cable wasn’t correct, and that’s already the third cable that you put in the wrong place today. And Simon might say, like, Matthias, I think you’re too tired today. You’re not 100% fit. So Simon can provide a protocol to the psychologist, and they could look at these values and say, like, maybe Matthias isn’t the perfect candidate for the next mission.

I don’t want them to find anything wrong with me, something that could disqualify me. So you keep a lot of information towards yourself. I hope that Simon will not exclude me from the next mission.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: Now, at this point, you might be thinking, we’ve been doing pretty well making plenty of discoveries by sending rovers and satellites to other planets and moons. Why not just keep doing that and save everyone the heartache and danger? Astronaut, Cady Coleman, says, there are solid scientific reasons to send humans. They can cover more ground, get more samples, do more tests. But that’s not the only reason she’d want to go. Here’s Cady.

CADY COLEMAN: You want so much to be there. You want to go back. I mean, it’s the thing about space, it’s quite addictive, right?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

D. PETERSCHMIDT: Here’s director, Ido Mizrahy, again.

IDO MIZRAHY: I think we’re still kind of all recovering both from being terrified of not being able to see my loved ones, and then suddenly, toward the end of the pandemic, being terrified of leaving my home and reconnecting, and suddenly feeling a great sense of comfort in being isolated, which was also a very terrifying idea. So if this story kind of provides a way to act out some of those things in another prism, right, that kind of gives it just enough distance where it’s not as close to the bone, you know, it’s happening to astronauts, and allows that kind of disguise to help you kind of deal with stuff.

CADY COLEMAN: We, as humans from the planet Earth are leaving our planet and living in space, and learning about how to go further and that the moon is next. And it’s not something that’s going to happen like someday. It’s happening really now.

D. PETERSCHMIDT: The Longest Goodbye is out in limited theaters today, March 8. And thanks to member station, KPCW in Park City, Utah for their assistance. For Science Friday. I’m D. Peterschmidt.

Thank you, D. And you can check out a trailer for the film at our website, sciencefriday.com/longestgoodbye. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

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