Konstantin Chterev

Research to address the technical challenges of human missions into space is growing. Knowledge about the social-psychological aspects of individuals’ experiences of confinement within habitats in space missions or extreme environments is also rapidly expanding. Social isolation is among one of the best-known risk factors in these environments. This study focuses on the relationship between time spent in specific activities (e.g., talking about personal matters) and the social-psychological effects of social isolation and confinement as a part of the LUNARK project, which was aimed at building and testing the first Moon analog habitat. Two space architects took part in a 61-day mission in Northern Greenland to simulate human life conditions in the habitat as a prototype of a human settlement on the Moon. The two crew members independently filled out a time-based diary with self-report measures on their daily activities and negative emotions, feelings of loneliness, resignation, desire for social contact, and time perception. First, our results showed that, for either space architect, desire for social contact increased over time, whereas feelings of resignation did not. Moreover, the protective role of specific daily activities emerged. Talking about personal matters and leisure time were associated with a decrease in resignation, whereas talking about personal topics and physical exercising increased the desire for social contact. Finally, engaging in leisure activities increased the perceived speed of time. We discussed these results referring to research on the consequences of long-term social isolation in extreme human expeditions and social psychological models of social isolation.

Maintaining psychologically adaptive relationships among team members operating in an isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environment for an extended period continues to be a challenge, with relevance for long-duration missions to the Moon and beyond. Two male architects were studied who lived and worked over a 60-d period in a polar ICE environment in a lunar analog habitat they designed and helped construct. Psychological measures were completed at different points of the mission, including a post-mission debriefing interview. Team members were highly different from each other on a number of personality traits, personal values, and stress and coping factors. Marked differences were noted on NEO-PI-3 Agreeableness and Extraversion personality traits, and Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) Stimulation, Power, and Achievement values. Team Effectiveness Questionnaire (TEQ) findings showed consistency between team members with high ratings on the Passion and Commitment and Purpose and Goals scales, and low ratings on the Roles scale. The leveling influence of decision authority and its deleterious effect on interpersonal interactions and work performance was evident. The interior design with attention to materials that made it more Earth-like and the circadian lighting system were associated with ease of work performance and promotion of relaxation and privacy. The study findings demonstrated the impact of incompatibility in personality traits and values on team performance, challenges regarding decision authority in a long-term dyadic relationship, and highlighted the human factors components of the habitat that facilitated effective individual and team functioning.

The relationship between ethical leadership and employee well-being has often been overlooked. This problem has been suggested to hold negative outcomes on employees and organizations. Little to no research exists on ethical leadership and well-being within the NewSpace industry, which is a high-performance, demanding field of work. Based on the social exchange theory, this cross-sectional study investigated the effect of ethical leadership on employee eudaimonic well-being, as well as underlying mechanisms and factors such as distributive justice. The sample comprised 101 adults working in the NewSpace industry, who completed measures of demographics, ethical leadership, eudaimonic well-being, and distributive justice. A simple mediated regression was used to examine the hypotheses, which was further investigated through a Sobel test, and bootstrapping through PROCESS software. The results revealed that ethical leadership significantly influenced employee eudaimonic well-being. This effect was significantly mediated by distributive justice. These findings shine light on under-researched areas within leadership and well-being literature, and may provide novel strategies for NewSpace organizations to tackle issues of leadership, well-being, and distributive justice. Recommendations are proposed.

“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena” (Sagan and Druyan, 1997, p. 6). This paper explores similarities across the space and theater industries. Both of these fields, for example, require people of the highest proficiencies to serve as the face of their project (i.e., astronauts and actors) while a mostly-unseen technical team supports the larger goal (i.e., mission control and backstage crews). We discuss a non-exhaustive list of domain-general factors (Plucker, 1998) while providing examples of domain-specific characteristics (Baer, 1998) encompassed within the expertise of astronauts and professional actors. While these domain-general factors may also be transferable across fields not covered here, we spotlight the space and theater industries as an illustrative example to further the call by research psychologists (e.g., de Vries, 2019) to investigate gaps within the literature of creativity in extreme environments.

As humans strive to become a multiplanetary species, the Moon has become a key target as a destination, and as a staging post for further exploration. But if human communities regularly use or live on the Moon, we must decide what elements of life on Earth to bring with us. Law, religion, language, culture, and customs will all need to be considered alongside the engineering demands of living on another planetary body. We have already seen the International Space Station become home to multiple languages and religions, but as off-planet communities develop autonomy, what fundamental rules will they adopt? The Moon Village Association has suggested that a participation mechanism will be more practical than a new international treaty for a lunar community. Participants at the International Space University’s 2018 Space Studies Program (SSP) held in Delft, Netherlands, were asked to take the role of the decision- makers to create a draft text representing the fundamental ”house rules” of a lunar village. The workshop, was done as a joint activity between SSP’s Space Policy, Economics, and Law (PEL) department and its Humanities (HUM) department. The workshop demands that participants adopt the difficulties of international cooperation in space as their own. Is there a simple solution for an international off-Earth community, or will they find the exigencies of existing treaties and expectations too much to surmount? This paper will present the findings of the ISU SSP participants, including their impressions of and lessons learned from the workshop.

Future lunar exploration will involve a combination of human and robotic elements engaging in a variety of activities. Reliable, scalable power systems will be the keystone in supporting such missions, especially those that require operation during lunar nights, in which the absence of direct sunlight and extreme temperature variations create an inhospitable environment. As part of the International Space University Space Studies Program 2018, the Lunar Night Survival Team Project proposed a scalable power generation and distribution system for utilization during lunar days and nights to enable a sustained presence on the Moon. The proposed power solution, termed Power Cell, is a modular structure of stackable subunits from which a grid of Power Cells will initially support up to six crew members on the lunar surface for an extended period of time and can be extended to megawatt-scale in the long term. The Power Cell is based on space-proven power systems, such as photovoltaics, fuel cells, batteries, and on the newly demonstrated Kilopower fission technology. In support of this solution, a legal and economic framework is formulated to enable future power-related activities in outer space under a regulatory and financial body called the International Space Power Organization (ISPO). New business models, fueled by private-sector innovation and public-sector support, are also presented to allow new industries to thrive on the lunar surface and in cislunar space.