Team Self-Maintenance during Long-Duration Space Exploration: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Objective:

We developed a conceptual framework of Team Self-Maintenance (TSM) within long-duration space exploration (LDSE), which we define as the process of monitoring, adjusting, and maintaining the psychological well-being of a team in the absence of external support.

Background:

Specific to LDSE and isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments, periods of routine can have a debilitating effect on the crew’s well-being and performance, and TSM is a critical process for avoiding these detrimental effects.

Method:

Based on themes drawn from nine subject matter expert interviews combined with an extensive literature review on related concepts, we developed an integrative conceptual framework of the key inputs, processes, and outputs involved in TSM within LDSE contexts.

Results:

Our TSM framework suggests team well-being as a key outcome that must be maintained during LDSE and information sharing, self-regulation, resource recovery, and emotional support as the key processes that enable team well-being. We also identify several contextual inputs that can serve as intervention points for enabling effective TSM.

Conclusion:

Our framework suggests that future research and practice aimed at effective LDSE should emphasize team well-being, rather than just performance, and that there are many open questions in terms of how teams will manage their own socio-emotional needs (e.g., conflict, recovery activities, and boredom) without external systems and support.

Application:

This conceptual framework describes the primary inputs, processes, and outcomes involved in the team self-maintenance process. This framework reflects context-specific theorizing most likely to be applicable only to LDSE contexts.

“Last month’s data stream from Starfleet never arrived, so the crew is looking forward to this one with even more anticipation than usual. We could all use some news from home”.

–Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager; Roddenberry et al., 2000)

While holodecks in starships might be a wonderful distraction, even fictional spaceflight crews often find space travel disconnected and monotonous. Similarly, today’s actual spaceflight crews spend an extraordinary amount of time on their missions fulfilling routine tasks while longing for real contact from home, a phenomenon that is often difficult or impossible. If unaccounted for, the mundane parts of spaceflight can have a slow and possibly imperceptible effect on the crew’s well-being and performance. For example, an astronaut discussing past spaceflight experiences once explained, ‘it becomes a bit like [the movie] Groundhog Day, the days are all kind of the same’ (Personal Communication, April 16, 2015). The repetitive nature of meals and daily scheduling can create a debilitating sense of boredom, disinterest, and frustration within the crew. As another interviewed astronaut stated, ‘eventually, it is hard to find interest in what you are doing over and over’’ (Personal Communication, April 8, 2015). Conditions of repetition and tedium can enable a compromised mental state and negatively impact emotional well-being within the spaceflight team.

Previous research has explored how to maintain well-being and performance within isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments, such as spaceflight. However, this research has typically focused on the dangers lurking behind every system failure and mission task that make up the inherently hostile environment of space (e.g., Shayler, 2000; Summers et al., 2005). As a result, less attention has been focused on the toll of boredom and routine during spaceflight, despite monotony, isolation, and confinement having been identified as key psychological stressors in spaceflight (Kanas & Manzey, 2008).

Furthermore, current International Space Station (ISS) and other near-earth missions have had the benefit of regular near real-time communication with ground control, crewmember families, and even the rest of the world. However, Kanas and Manzey (2008) emphasize that the stressors associated with ICE environments are exacerbated by time and distance, such as in the contexts of long-duration space exploration (LDSE). The psychosocial changes that occur after the novelty of space has worn off and crews realize they are only at the halfway point of the mission can often be a pivotal moment. Additionally, an anticipated challenge unique to LDSE, though not yet experienced, is the Earth-out of-view phenomenon. Earth, and its familiar aspects, will gradually wane from view, creating the potential for depression, anxiety, and loss of commitment (Kanas & Manzey, 2008; Tachibana, 2019). Advanced automated systems may relieve crew workload by handling navigation duties, but over time, other day-to-day activities will begin to feel monotonous (e.g., Palinkas et al., 2004; Sandal, 2004; Stuster, 2011), and the crew may find themselves welcoming any event that may break up their day-to-day activities.

The fact is that LDSE crews will spend the entirety of their working and non-working hours in the same place with the same people, which can put an inordinate amount of stress on a team. Depression, anxiety, fatigue, cognitive impairment, interpersonal conflict, and decline in individual and in overall team performance (Collins, 2003; Kansas et al., 2009; Palinkas et al., 2004, 2011) are all risks inherent to the yet-to-be-experienced ICE environment of LDSE. The key processes needed for LSDE spaceflight crews to actively and autonomously manage their own team’s well-being will be essential to understand and support. Therefore, the purpose of the current conceptual effort is to move beyond a focus on near-earth spaceflight contexts to introduce the construct of team self-maintenance (TSM) within LDSE, which we define as the constantly evolving process of monitoring, adjusting, and maintaining the psychological well-being of a team in the absence of external support. First, we briefly summarize the results of LDSE-focused interviews with spaceflight subject matter experts (SMEs) that, combined with relevant science pulled from the published literature, serve as the foundation for our conceptual framework (DiazGranados, et al., 2020). Second, we describe our framework and the key inputs, processes, and outcomes of TSM within LDSE. Third, we discuss the implications of our framework in terms of future research and practice.

EXPERT INTERVIEW PROCEDURE & RESULTS

As a first step toward defining the problem and developing a conceptual framework surrounding TSM during LDSE, an operational assessment utilizing interviews from SMEs was conducted (DiazGranados et al., 2016). Nine SMEs were voluntarily interviewed between April and July 2015. These SMEs represented a variety of relevant professional spaceflight perspectives including astronauts, flight directors, spaceflight analog researchers, operations planners, and space psychologists. Interviews were not recorded per the sponsor’s requirements and to facilitate anonymity and candid responses. However, detailed notes were taken by all research team members. While many of the responses gathered were indirect quotes, they were corroborated across all research team members. The interviews followed a semi-structured protocol (Appendix A) designed to foster meaningful and individualized discussion about experiences and thoughts relevant to TSM within LDSE contexts. The exact questions asked were individualized to fit each SME’s expertise and experience (e.g., astronauts were asked about spaceflight experiences whereas space psychologists were asked about their role in providing external support).

Following best practices of thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006,Braun & Clarke, 2006), the researchers identified explicit and implicit themes within the data while carefully considering the LDSE context. As is typical in thematic analysis, themes reflect the researcher’s holistic and subjective judgments in terms of what meaningful concepts are reflected in the data, and ‘more instances do not necessarily mean the theme itself is more crucial’ (p. 82). Overall, seven meaningful themes emerged from the original coding of the SME interviews (presented in no particular order): (1) expectations, (2) boredom, (3) meaningful work, (4) recreation, (5) interpersonal relationships, (6) family, and (7) physical environment. These themes (see Table 1 for summary) were then integrated with concepts drawn from the published literature into our conceptual effort aimed at defining and describing the process of TSM.

TABLE 1:

Themes drawn from spaceflight subject matter expert interviews

Theme	Description	Exemplar Quotes
Expectations	The need for expectation setting to align the realities of spaceflight and work being conducted during LDSE.	“People need to be given an opportunity to realize what kind of environment they are going to be in. They need to know what to bring to take care of themselves” “Giving them a reality check about the astronaut job and what the downsides are as well as the upsides”.
Boredom	The impact of monotony and routine in creating a sense of boredom and frustration.	“The majority of the flight will be automated which reduces task load for the teams, but that leaves nothing for them to do and that’s the worst thing that could happen”. “If there are extended periods of autonomy, the avoidance of boredom will be huge”.
Meaningful Work	The relevance of providing opportunities for doing work that is both significant and positive in valence during LDSE.	“Some of the great explorations of the poles understood this problem very well and would have the crew working making the tools, sleds, equipment that they would use on the mission because it was meaningful work”.
Recreation	The importance of providing opportunities for down time for all crewmembers.	“The opportunities for recreation were limited so you had to be fairly resourceful, find ways to have creative recreation and then to balance that with meaningful work that is stimulating to you”. “Once I had a balance of work and recreation, after the fire when I developed a better rapport, then time flowed effortlessly”.
Interpersonal Relationships	The influence of the interactions between crewmembers and the impact it has on others mood, and the crew itself.	“Task disruptions come more often, interpersonal disruptions are more problematic”. “One thing that did help was having the cosmonauts over to the house for snacks and drinks. I think they very much appreciated that as a gesture of personability”.
Family	The consideration of the family as part of the multi-team system of LDSE and an influence on team self-maintenance.	“I was relying on a lot of communications with family and friends. I spent 2–3 hours every evening writing messages to them. In holidays, everyone is busy, so I received 3 times less messages than usual. During these 2 months I didn’t have the energy to do the additional personal activities I had planned for myself”.
Physical Environment	The environmental factors which impact well-being.	“The small space and social isolation are difficult, especially because you didn’t choose these people to be confined with”. “Having space for independence is a big deal”.

A Conceptual Framework of Team Self-Maintenance during LDSE.

Based on the combined results of the interview themes and an extensive literature review on related concepts (DiazGranados et al., 2016), we developed an integrative conceptual framework summarizing what we believe are the key inputs, processes, and outcomes involved in effective team self-maintenance of team well-being within LDSE settings (Figure 1). Our framework is focused primarily at the team referent and level of analysis, rather than at the individual level. However, we adopt a multilevel perspective when considering the emergence and evolution of team level phenomenon (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000) and therefore in some cases we do discuss and include individual level concepts that we believe act as the key elemental content impacting the emergence of team level phenomenon. In other words, when an individual concept is mentioned, it is because that elemental content residing in the individual team members is what combines and interacts to emerge as the relevant team level concept included in our framework.

Figure 1.

Team self-maintenance (TSM) during long-duration space exploration (LDSE).

Several of the concepts included in the model were explicitly reviewed as part of our initial literature review in line with our definition of TSM (e.g., self-regulation, resource recovery), whereas others (e.g., meaningful work, boredom) were added based on the operational themes emerging from the expert interviews. We have revised the framework iteratively based on careful consideration regarding where in the team’s lifespan the concept is likely to play the biggest role, and what elements are most critical and novel in terms of lacking prior spaceflight team research. Relevant concepts were categorized as key inputs, key processes, or key outcomes depending on whether the concept is an input that is carried in from the beginning of team formation, an ongoing process that must be maintained throughout the team’s lifespan, or a key outcome that reflects the state of the team’s overall functioning. It is important to note that there are many other concepts that are crucial to teamwork overall that were considered and could be included in this model (e.g., shared mental models, shared leadership). However, for the sake of clarity and parsimony, we focus on the elements we believe are most critical to the team self-maintenance process as it has been defined.

Another key assertion of the proposed framework is that effective TSM requires all relevant processes be managed within the team rather than through externally supported conduits. While on one hand, this empowers the team by emphasizing the importance of developing trust and cohesion among crewmembers (e.g., Sandal, 2004), it also requires the team to address internal conflicts and states of boredom with minimal external intervention, which is atypical compared to historical approaches for near-earth spaceflight. This aligns closely with our definition of TSM as a process, where both individual crewmembers and the team monitor, adjust, and maintain well-being in the absence of real-time guidance from external resources.

Another key aspect of our framework is the critical influence of mission duration or phase, which we operationalize as time, throughout the TSM process. Time is expected to impact the process in several ways, some known and some unknown. The unique challenges of LDSE will compound the negative impact of inputs such as physical confinement and rigid scheduling, throughout the duration of the mission, on the accumulation of stressors created by team processes, attitudes, and cognitions. These challenges are likely to be unique in different operational phases of LDSE missions (i.e., outbound, surface, or inbound). Furthermore, the temporal phases of team performance (e.g., action vs. transition phases; Marks et al., 2001) are likely to influence the extent to which certain processes are necessary and/or effective. This is important when incorporating concerns of the presence of a Third-Quarter Phenomenon, and a general decline in overall well-being. These phenomena relate to the team’s ability to manage itself over time (Stuster, 2016; Van Wijk, 2018; Wang et al., 2014).

Key Outcome: Team Well-Being

Most research on teams within spaceflight has focused on team performance as the primary outcome, whereas less research has explored what contributes to team well-being, despite team well-being being discussed as an important concept in spaceflight (e.g., Landon et al., 2018). Furthermore, one theme that emerged in our interviews was the importance placed upon the psychological well-being of the spaceflight team, not just the task-relevant performance of the crew, and the amount of external support that is currently devoted to psychological and physical well-being of crewmembers. Traditionally, ground control has provided considerable psychological well-being support via activities such as regular medical conferences and arranging for the crewmembers to communicate with friends and family members back on Earth. However, in the LDSE context, the lack of consistent real-time connectivity with ground and the extreme duration of the mission will both make this approach less feasible and less effective (Landon et al., 2018). In other words, for LDSE crews to self-maintain well-being, it will be necessary for some supportive inputs and processes to reside within the spaceflight crew itself.

For the purposes of the current framework, we leverage a combination of our interview themes and the literature on individual psychological well-being to define team well-being as our primary outcome of interest. Psychological well-being at the individual level is a highly debated and multi-dimensional construct, with one influential model suggesting it refers to the general concept of positive psychological functioning, and it has six dimensions: (1) self-acceptance, (2) environmental mastery, (3) positive relations, (4) purpose in life, (5) personal growth, and (6) autonomy (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). While most of these dimensions are not directly applicable at the team level, we suggest that team well-being could be defined as a shared state of positive psychological and interpersonal functioning within teams. As such, we further define team well-being as including the presence of positive, and the absence of negative, psychological emergent states that reflect positive relations and functioning within the team including: (1) high trust, (2) high cohesion, (3) low conflict, and (4) low boredom. The inclusion of these sub-dimensions is in part based on the results of our expert interviews, and in part based on the established science of team emergent states, as will be described in the sections that follow. It is important to note that given all team level processes and emergent states evolve constantly over time, we expect mutual causal relationships, or feedback loops, between the process and outcome variables involved in TSM.

Trust

‘Trust is foundational to teams given the interdependence and need for coordination’ (Fiore et al., 2015, p. 283). SMEs described the need to get to know your team and build trust: ‘When it comes to life and death things, trust is the lifeblood that allowed the decision tree to work well’. Several SMEs discussed the need for teams to train together but to train doing trust-building activities with real risk, so that team members can learn how their teammates function in high-risk situations. Consistent with task-based trust, the perceptions formed during training allow crewmembers to accumulate observations of competence and reliability which will contribute to the crew’s overall performance and well-being (Fiore et al., 2015). Experts have argued that it is critical to build positive, trusting relationships between both internal and external members of the spaceflight crew (Bishop, 2011; Kring & Kaminski, 2011; Wichman, 2011). Team-based trust, or the crewmembers’ perceptions of dependability and concern for others (Fiore et al., 2015), is a team level emergent state that may develop via training well before any spaceflight crew begins a LDSE voyage, but because it is dynamic it must also be actively maintained throughout the mission. We include trust as a key component of team well-being because it reflects the extent to which the team has positive, functional relations.

Cohesion

Complementary to trust, we include cohesion as a key emergent state that is also generally reflective of positive relations within the team, and therefore is a component of team well-being. Cohesion, defined as the strength of the social bonds among the members of a group, has been established as critical to the effective functioning of teams (Beal et al., 2003). When members of a highly specialized team hold differing perspectives on how tasks should be accomplished, cohesion is necessary to minimize conflict and promote collaboration (Fiore et al., 2015). Cohesion is often built through activities that strengthen the team members’ familiarity and interpersonal attraction toward one another, such as informal social activities and other positive social experiences that strengthen team members’ sense of group pride and commitment (Draguns & Harrison, 2011): As one SME explained, ‘Four years together made us like brothers and sisters. We could complete each other’s sentences; feel each other’s moods. That helped us to work together for complex missions like robotic operations’.

Conflict

Throughout our interviews, SMEs high-lighted those differences in cultural norms or personality, such as mealtime etiquette or personal tidiness, would often begin as subtle annoyances. But, in missions of any significant length, these unmonitored annoyances can eventually grow into full-blown conflict (Sandal, 2004). In fact, the unique context of LDSE is likely to exacerbate emerging conflicts, as research has found that sleep and energy deprivation can make it difficult to regulate emotions and face difficulties (Lahart et al., 2013). Small non-task-related interpersonal conflicts have always been present in extreme environments and the risk of negative impact from it is likely to increase within LDSE contexts (Harrison & Fiedler, 2011). Therefore, we include conflict as a key component of team well-being as the presence of excessive conflict could be indicative of dysfunctional interpersonal relationships.

Boredom

The impact of monotony and routine in creating a problematic sense of boredom and frustration surfaced repeatedly in expert interviews. Put succinctly by one SME, ‘Boredom is a big deal’. The highly predictable nature of daily scheduling, and the bland and repetitive nature and minimal variety in planned meals often diminished motivation. Interviewees expressed growing concern over how increasingly automated technology used in LDSE will potentially magnify crew boredom. Excessive amounts of boredom reduce crewmember energy and motivation for maintaining peak performance levels. It is logical to infer that high levels of workload will require resource recovery, but boredom from low workload is an insidious contributor to reduced spaceflight crew well-being, and TSM will be a critical process for avoiding this negative psychological outcome. We do acknowledge that conceptually, boredom is a primarily individual level phenomenon, and there is essentially no research on whether or not there exists a corresponding concept of team level boredom. Regardless, we believe that excessive or unmanaged boredom within the individual crewmembers represents another indicator of a lack of team well-being, especially if that experience is common across crewmembers.

Key Processes

Given the definition of TSM as a constantly evolving process, our framework is built around several interrelated sub-processes that we believe will enable team well-being outcomes as defined above: information sharing, self-regulation, resource recovery, and emotional support. A key argument within our framework is that effective TSM will require all the processes described thus far to occur internally to the spaceflight team as opposed to externally. These processes will enable the emergence of positive team attitudes and team cognitions that together reflect overall team well-being. More specifically, effectively engaging in these key TSM processes will increase team trust and cohesion while reducing conflict and boredom. We acknowledge that given the dynamic and emergent nature of most team processes, attitudes, and cognitions, these concepts are co-evolving and mutually related to one another.

Information Sharing

Information sharing has been defined as ‘conscious and deliberate attempts on the part of team members to exchange work-related information, keep one another apprised of activities, and inform one another of key developments’ (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002, p. 881). Meta-analytic research has shown that information sharing among team members promotes many positive outcomes including cohesion, satisfaction, and performance (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009). Information sharing is critical for the monitoring portion of TSM, in that it enables the team to maintain and update critical shared mental models and shared expectations allowing them to be aware when there are issues, both technical and socio-emotional, that need to be addressed. While much research has focused on communication and information sharing within teams and within spaceflight (e.g., Anania et al., 2017), what is unique to TSM, given the focus on team well-being, is an emphasis on information sharing surrounding socio-emotional issues and needs. While previous spaceflight crews have been able to rely heavily on external resources for socio-emotional information and support, LDSE crews will need to actively manage and share information internal to the team to maintain team well-being.

Self-Regulation

Also stemming from our emphasis on team well-being, we identify the self-regulation of emotions, cognitions, and behaviors at both the individual and team levels as a key process that allows the team to effectively adjust and self-correct. Very little research has formally defined self-regulation at the team level, but research on individual self-regulation has emphasized that individuals differ in their ability to engage in self-corrective adjustments to that behavior in order to stay on track toward one’s goals (Vohs & Baumeister, 2016). Millward et al. (2010) proposed a theoretical model for understanding the conditions for effective self-regulated teamwork. This model suggests that for teams to effectively self-regulate, they must have a common goal that requires them to coordinate, they must have a teamwork structure that is conducive to coordination, and they must have team level rewards. These conditions increase team identification which subsequently improves the team’s shared cognition, commitment, cohesion, and collective efficacy. Other research has suggested that effective emotion regulation can allow teams to take advantage of the positive possibilities of task conflict while also limiting the negative impact of relationship conflict (Jiang et al., 2013). Overall, we expect that LDSE teams will need to continuously engage in self-corrective behaviors, or effective self-regulation and emotion regulation, aimed at maintaining high trust, high cohesion, low conflict, and low boredom throughout the team’s lifespan.

Resource Recovery

Finally, because of the risks inherently associated with LDSE contexts, the collective recovery of the team’s resources (e.g., emotional and cognitive resources, energy, and motivation) will be especially important for TSM over the long term. Sonnentag and Fritz (2007) identified recovery experiences as being those mechanisms by which individuals engage in to promote recovery. Specifically, these mechanisms are described as psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery experiences, and control during leisure time. Psychological detachment from work is the ability to disengage mentally, not just physically, and to become unoccupied by work-related duties. Relaxation is a state of low activation and increased positive affect. Mastery experiences refer to off-job activities that provide distraction from work but also provide challenge. Finally, control during leisure time is the ability to decide what to do with one’s off-work time. Research has suggested that all four recovery experiences are necessary for maintaining long-term psychological well-being (Siltaloppi et al., 2011).

Resource recovery will be especially difficult for spaceflight crews since they will live and work in the same space which will make it harder to truly detach themselves from their work. Interviewees emphasized the importance of quality recreation time and activity, and mentioned video games, access to the Internet including social media and email, artistic activities such as drawing or sketching, journaling, and movies as critical ways to psychologically disconnect from work and to recover resources. One interviewee shared that the celebration of holidays was often looked forward to because it helped to break up routine. Activities like playing video games as a crew appeared to simultaneously help crewmembers avoid boredom and engage in restorative psychological detachment from work while also helping to build stronger cohesion.

Emotional Support

One form of emotional support that was emphasized as important to coping with stress was external support systems such as family. Understandably, when it is possible, spaceflight crewmembers turn to their spouses and families to vent frustrations, stay tethered to their personal life, and maintain a sense of normalcy. The nature of LDSE, however, means that this type of emotional support will need to come from within the team, at least to some extent and during certain times within missions. Emotional support in the research literature is often investigated by considering the support provided and the support available to individuals. Emotional support has been shown to be negatively related to turnover (Tews et al., 2013) and positively related to the capacity to endure difficult days (Hoang, 2014). Actions such as listening to coworkers and taking an interest in colleagues have shown to be central to employees remaining in an organization. Moreover, research has found that coworker support plays a crucial role in preventing emotional exhaustion (Baeriswyl et al., 2017). The emotional support provided by teammates may counter the negative consequences to well-being that are inherent to LDSE.

Key Inputs

Although the process of team self-maintenance is primarily represented within the process and outcome portions of the framework, the results of the operational assessment and literature review highlight several critical contextual and compositional input variables that influence the way in which, and the extent to which, these processes can occur. In other words, these inputs represent key countermeasure opportunities, or intervention points, through which spaceflight agencies can enable effective TSM within LDSE spaceflight teams.

Meaningful Work

One strategy for increasing well-being and combating boredom that was mentioned by interviewees was to give crewmembers more meaningful work. Interviewees mentioned interventions as simple as providing crew with more explanation of the ‘why’ in the research they do in order to give meaning and promote ownership of tasks. Oftentimes, a spaceflight crew finds themselves executing research that is not their own or relevant to their personal interests. While the utility of that research is seldom questioned, crewmembers lack a personal or meaningful connection associated with the research. Determining which activities are meaningful is often a personal choice, so individualized options would need to be determined prior to the mission. Corroborated by the SMEs, artificially created work, or anything that can be perceived as ‘busy work’, may generate the opposite effect as intended by meaningful work – ultimately frustrating the crew instead of promoting recovery. In sum, while is it not reasonable to expect that all work will be meaningful (e.g., cleaning, equipment maintenance), it will be important to balance monotonous yet necessary work with more engaging and meaningful work.

Realistic Expectations

Another theme that emerged in our interviews as influencing a team’s ability to engage in self-maintenance during LDSE is that of realistic expectations. It was emphasized that an astronaut’s initial expectations often are not necessarily aligned with the realities of spaceflight. Informally, a countermeasure currently in place by NASA is for members of past space crews to share lessons learned from past spaceflight experiences with current trainees. As one SME stated, ‘People need to be given an opportunity to realize what kind of environment they are going to be in. They need to know what to bring to take care of themselves’. Even though LDSE missions will be unique compared to current near-earth missions, setting expectations up front about not just the dangers of spaceflight, but also the less glamorous and more tedious aspects of life in ICE contexts, will be important.

Levels of Autonomy

As previously mentioned by an expert, ‘Boredom is a big deal’ and this will only be exacerbated by aspects of increased automation required in the technical systems used throughout the mission. As a function of an LDSE mission, communication delays will be a significant factor in mission design. Due to near-instantaneous communications of current Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) operations, a spacecraft and its crew have an advantage of ‘real-time’ communication with Earth and therefore mission operations and support can occur in a more fluid nature. Communication delays in the LEO environment would result in increasingly more difficult mission operations (Fischer et al., 2013; Noe et al., 2011). To address these changes there will need to be increased levels of autonomy as part of any spacecraft and mission design traveling beyond LEO. The increased autonomy of the spacecraft will require the crew to combat increased numbers of extended low-stimulus periods. Although increasing levels of autonomy are somewhat unavoidable given the nature of LDSE, it is important to emphasize that this contextual factor will make it especially important for spaceflight crews to be vigilant in monitoring for negative effects such as boredom and conflict (Kanas et al., 2009).

Team Training

While both skill-based training and task-based training were viewed as important, interviewees suggested that skill-based training would be far more effective and beneficial for LDSE crews because it will be impossible to predict and train for every single task they may encounter. Aside from equipment specific training, it will be more critical to train broad, generalizable life and mission skills that allow the crewmembers to handle any situation or surprise that arises, and to actively engage in the self-regulation necessary to maintain long-term well-being. Additionally, there is a risk of skill degradation if training received before the mission is not continually reinforced. However, interviewees mentioned that this type of maintenance training may begin to feel like an undesirable chore to the crewmembers, and that finding ways to keep the training engaging and encouraging for crewmembers to take an interest in will be critical. Given that LDSE crews are inherently likely to experience situations in which they cannot rely on the ground team for support, it will be imperative that crewmembers are cross-trained and have the competencies necessary to function both autonomously and in support of one another’s tasks.

Team Debriefs

It is well established that debriefs focused on teamwork processes have been shown to improve performance (Tannenbaum & Cerasoli, 2013). We suggest that similar positive outcomes will result from self-maintenance-oriented debriefs that are expanded to include discussion of processes related to psychological well-being and resource recovery. LDSE crews could meet regularly to discuss socio-emotional issues and needs, and to review what is and is not working for the team in terms of self-regulation, resource recovery, etc. Several interviewees expressed that debriefs are not used in an optimal way in current spaceflight missions. One respondent mentioned that debriefs are more of an individual tool with little emphasis on the team while others mentioned their frequent but informal use. Therefore, we suggest debriefs should be structured and facilitated properly to encourage honest reflections from all crewmembers and to provide an emphasis on both positive and negative outcomes at the team level.

Individual Differences

One key input that was mentioned by interviewees as having a large impact on spaceflight team functioning were the crewmembers’ interpersonal skills (Stuster, 2016). Resilience and introversion were highlighted as critical to managing stress and psychological well-being within a socially isolated and confined environment (e.g., Inoue et al., 2004). It is interesting to note that there is some conflict inherent in the simultaneous need for interpersonal skills and introversion. Interviewees suggested that loners and introverts may fare better during spaceflight because they do not require much social interaction to maintain their well-being, which has been suggested by previous research (Francis, 1969). This competency presents a paradox, as the ideal candidates for spaceflight will need to be interpersonally skilled and able to handle spending a long duration in close proximity to their teammates. However, they will also need to be introverted enough to not mind feelings of social isolation. In other words, ideal spaceflight team members may display a combination of personality traits (e.g., introversion, interpersonal skill) that are not commonly found together; individuals may be what are referred to as ambiverts (i.e., a balance of extrovert and introvert features), a person who falls in the middle of the introversion/extraversion continuum but also demonstrates effective emotion regulation ability. Furthermore, spaceflight crewmembers should be made aware of one another’s key individual differences in terms of personality, culture, and preferences, prior to mission start. One indirect way to enhance team members’ awareness of one another’s personalities and preferences is to train the crew as an intact team as much as possible.

Physical Environment

Interestingly, there was disagreement among interviewees on the importance of environmental factors for crew well-being during spaceflight. A primary contention was that clutter results in fatigue. One interviewee felt that ‘…you just get used to it [the lack of gravity and the disorganization],’ while another compared the disorganization to ‘Walmart after an earthquake’. Despite engaging in extensive training to cope with fatigue, interviewees mentioned that fatigue affects each crewmember differently, just like the effects of clutter. As mentioned by an expert, ‘The small space and social isolation are difficult, especially because you didn’t choose these people to be confined with’.

Personal space was also emphasized as important to well-being given the confinement, and is typically conceptualized as private sleep stations, where each crewmember has a refuge from the shared living and working quarters. How the crew interacts with the shared environment and their own personal space can impact the TSM process and given the potential for LDSE contexts to exacerbate the effects of all stressors, adequate environmental and personal space design will likely be critical to enabling effective TSM during LDSE missions (Suedfeld & Steel, 2000). One possibility is to create reconfigurable physical spaces so that crewmembers can individualize personal spaces to fit their own preferences and needs, and so that spaces can be changed to fit different needs over time.

DISCUSSION

We have defined team self-maintenance as an unfolding behavioral process where teams monitor, adjust, and maintain well-being when there is no guidance from external resources, which sets it apart from resilience and adaptation (Table 2). Resilience, defined as the ability to respond to adversity, is considered a dynamic emergent state (Maynard & Kennedy, 2016), whereas TSM is defined as a process. Additionally, TSM does not require the existence of a definable challenge or adversity and can be enacted at any time throughout an LDSE mission. Adaptation is defined as the response to a salient trigger/cue that results in a positive outcome for the entire team (Burke et al., 2006), whereas TSM does not require a triggering event. Another important distinction is that team resilience and adaptation tend to focus on task performance as an outcome, whereas TSM is focused on team well-being.

TABLE 2:

Comparison of team self-maintenance to similar constructs

Construct	Ability	Process	Requires trigger /cue (e.g., Adversity)	Focus on team well-being
Team Resilience	✔		✔
Team Adaptation		✔	✔
Team Self-Maintenance		✔		✔

Implications for Research

Our framework highlights the need for future research on several understudied topics. First, there are clear gaps in the literature regarding concepts that have been established as important for individual well-being, but that are less understood at the team level, such as well-being, boredom, self-regulation, resource recovery, and emotional support. Future research is needed to explore the definition and concept of team well-being and to determine if it includes the subdimensions we have posited (i.e., trust, cohesion, conflict, and boredom) or if there are other key aspects of team well-being which better reflect the higher-level construct. Research is also needed to examine the potential impact and concept of boredom at the team level. For example, research could explore if there is a compositional tipping point at which boredom experienced by individuals in the team begins to impact the team as a whole.

Self-regulation, resource recovery, and emotional support reflect processes that have been extensively studied at the individual level but are poorly understood in the context of teams. Taking a multilevel perspective, many open questions exist regarding whether self-regulation and resource recovery processes at the team level are isomorphic to those studied at the individual level, or if there are unique processes or activities that exist at the team level. For example, do certain activities that can be participated in by the whole team contribute more to team level resource recovery, or do all experiences of psychological detachment, mastery, relaxation, and control during leisure time have their impact on the team simply through their impact on individual resources? Emotional support is a relational concept that requires both a party being supported and a party providing support, and therefore seems to have clear potential for teams. Research should explore the nature of emotional support being enacted within a team, rather than from outside the team. What are the possible unintended consequences of providing emotional support to one’s own team members? Is the provision of emotional support within a team simply one form of backup behavior, or a unique process? Research in other domains (e.g., military psychology) could help to inform the research necessary to inform LDSE.

Given the nature of LDSE, there is also a need for future research exploring the impact of time on the TSM process. Research questions could examine during which phases of LDSE missions (e.g., outbound, surface, inbound, action, transition, third quarter) is TSM going to be most crucial? During which phases will TSM emerge and occur naturally? When is it most important to provide countermeasures or interventions aimed at scaffolding the team’s ability to engage in TSM? This also suggests that future research will need to study teams in long-duration longitudinal settings that more closely reflect the risks inherent in LDSE and the reciprocal nature of TSM processes and outcomes. We position trust, cohesion, conflict, and boredom as key outcomes in our model, but these emergent states will undoubtedly also have an impact on the team’s processes and functioning in future performance cycles. To what extent do these processes and emergent states co-develop over time and create positive or negative feedback loops impacting the team’s well-being and performance?

Finally, although this framework was specifically developed to fit the operational context of spaceflight and LDSE, research should explore the potential broader implications of TSM in other team-based organizational contexts. In what other teams could TSM be useful? Perhaps other ICE contexts such as Antarctic research stations, submarine crews, or teams isolated during global pandemics? Given the focus on team well-being, TSM may be a useful process for any self-managed project team that has little access to external support.

Implications for Practice

In terms of informing future LDSE mission design and management, our framework high-lights several inputs, or useful interventions points, that can be used to enable better TSM within spaceflight crews. Missions can be designed to provide meaningful work, both to individuals and the team. Crews can be composed to include complementary interpersonal skills and individual differences that simultaneously allow crewmembers to have positive interpersonal interactions while also successfully enduring long periods of isolation. Crews can also be trained as intact teams and provided other interventions that focus on establishing realistic expectations regarding the nature of LDSE. Once in flight, teams can use regular debriefs to continuously monitor and adjust their expectations, psychological states, and behaviors, especially by devoting some portion of debriefs to the concept of team well-being and related socio-emotional concepts. Teams can be trained to anticipate and proactively plan on managing boredom during phases of the mission where autonomy is particularly high. Lastly, physical spaces can be designed to provide flexible and reconfigurable arrangements that allow crew personal spaces and other appealing elements that contribute to emotional and social well-being.

CONCLUSION

Specific to the context of long-duration space exploration (LDSE), we have put forth a new framework of team self-maintenance (TSM), which we define as the process of monitoring, adjusting, and maintaining the psychological well-being of a team in the absence of external support. This framework highlights concepts that are currently understudied at the team level, including team well-being, boredom, self-regulation, resource recovery, and emotional support, and outlines several fruitful directions for future research in these areas. This framework also suggests possibilities for effective countermeasures to enable better TSM during LDSE, including interventions regarding team composition, team training, team debriefs, work design, and physical environment design. We hope future research and practice aimed at improving outcomes in LDSE will build upon our framework to further understand the nature and importance of team self-maintenance.

KEY POINTS.

• Long-Duration Space Exploration (LDSE) missions are yet-to-be-experienced and the unique risks to spaceflight teams are somewhat unknown.

• Team Self-Maintenance (TSM), defined as the process of monitoring, adjusting, and maintaining the psychological well-being of a team in the absence of external support, will be critical to successful LDSE.

• Our conceptual framework of TSM combines themes drawn from subject matter expert interviews with relevant research to outline the key inputs, processes, and outcomes involved in team self-maintenance within LDSE contexts.

• TSM does not require a trigger event and emphasizes team well-being, unlike related concepts of team resilience and team adaptation.

• Future research examining TSM in LDSE contexts is needed to explore concepts not fully understood at the team level (e.g., well-being, boredom, self-regulation, resource recovery, and emotional support).

• Those involved in planning LDSE should consider meaningful work, realistic expectations, team training, team debriefs, team composition, and physical environment as intervention opportunities to enhance TSM.

Biographies

Jessica L. Wildman, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Faculty Co-Lead of the Institute for Culture, Collaboration, and Management at the Florida Institute of Technology. She received her degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida in 2011. To date, she has co-authored 22 book chapters, 15 journal articles, and presented over 70 national and international conference presentations on topics including team processes and emergent states, team cognition, team performance measurement, global virtual teams, trust development and repair, and cultural competence.

Dominic Fedele is a doctoral student at the Florida Institute of Technology. He previously received an MBA in Operations Research in 2009 from Cleveland State University.

Anderson Wilder is a doctoral student at the Florida Institute of Technology. He previously received a Master’s in Space Studies in 2015 from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.

Michael Curtis, PhD, is the co-founder of Bonsai Institute. As a Human Factors psychologist, he applies his background in research design, human factors psychology, and cognitive theory toward developing practical solutions to issues that impact communities. This includes analysis and integration of technological systems intended to aid human performance. His expertise is in simulation, perception, teams, and learning as it applies to training and assessment of complex systems. He received his degree from the University of Central Florida in 2011.

Deborah DiazGranados, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Director of Team Science of the Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her PhD and MS degrees in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida in 2011. Her expertise is in collaboration and leadership, particularly in contexts with high levels of uncertainty. She is currently funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and The Rockefeller Foundation.