Astronauts report significant difficulties with sleep during Space missions. Psychological, physiological, and habitability factors are all thought to play a role in spaceflight insomnia. Crewmembers gain experience with the spaceflight sleep environment as their missions progress, but this knowledge is not formally collected and communicated to subsequent crews. This lack of information transfer prevents crews from optimizing their capability to sleep during mission, which leads to fatigue and its potentially deleterious effects. The goal of this project is astronauts with recent spaceflight experience to gather their knowledge of and insights into sleep in Space. Structured interviews consisting of standardized closed and open-ended questionnaires are administered to astronauts who have flown on the Space Shuttle since the Columbia disaster. It is hoped that review and analysis of the pooled responses to the interview questions will lead to greater understanding of the sleep environment during short duration spaceflight, with attention placed on problem aspects and their potential solutions.
Exploration of Habitability Factors Influencing Short Duration Spaceflight: Structured Postflight Interviews of Shuttle Crewmembers
Human Research Program Investigators'' Workshop ; 2009 ; League City, TX, United States
2009-02-02
Conference paper
No indication
English
AIAA-2004-6021 Habitability and Human Factors: Lessons Learned in Long Duration Spaceflight
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2004
|Shuttle Orbiter Thermal Control Postflight Evaluation
AIAA | 1983
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