18th IAA Humans in Space Symposium (2011)
2283.pdf
BHP Risk Reduction Research Strategy for Future Spaceflight Missions: The Critical Role of
Space Analogs
L. B. Leveton. NASA Johnson Space Center
The critical path for reducing the Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP) human system risks for
exploration missions relies on space analogs. BHP risks include behavioral health disorders, team
performance and cohesion, and sleep and circadian problems. Mitigating risk for long duration ISS
missions (including those of increasing autonomous operations) and missions beyond LEO to asteroids
or other destinations such as Mars requires determining “best fit” analogs. Optimal utilization of
existing analogs drives the requirements that increase the fidelity of those analogs. From the BHP
perspective, analogs must possess key characteristics that are relevant to the behavioral health and
performance research gaps, especially in the context of long duration, extreme isolation and
confinement missions. This panel will provide an overview of the analogs that BHP has utilized for BHP
and the role they play in transitioning research from the laboratory to spaceflight operations. In
addition, the process BHP utilizes for making decisions about optimal analog utilization and several of
the research tasks that have successfully been implemented in different analogs to aid in the
transition to ops process will be presented. The audience will develop an appreciation of the role of
spaceflight analogs in reducing risk for human spaceflight as well as the important BHP characteristics
that must be present for addressing research gaps related to those risks.