Despite the excitement, the trip won’t be an easy one. NASA will not set a mission date for quite some time — but Craig Kundrot, the chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, said dozens of risks already have been considered for a mission to the “Red Planet,” which likely would take years to complete.

“We expect six-month transit, 18 months on the surface and six-month transit back,” Kundrot said. “That’s almost three years, and that’s a very long time for a small crew to be together in a relatively confined space.”

Both MSU research groups received $1.2 million grants from NASA to cater to the needs of astronauts in terms of social interaction, teamwork and physical exercise.

The first team, which includes psychology professors Steve Kozlowski and Daisy Chang and Associate Chair for Research Subir Biswas, will study how humans interact with one another in teams for long periods of time.

“We’re trying to assess individuals and their interactions with others to show how well people engage socially in terms of their work,” Kozlowski said.

The other team includes kinesiology professor Deb Feltz and professors Norbert Kerr, James Pivarnik and Brian Winn, with the focus primarily on exercise to keep astronauts from losing muscle mass in a gravity-free atmosphere.

“(Astronauts) don’t have the gravity pull to help strengthen them,” Feltz said. “To combat that, they need to do a pretty rigorous exercise regiment.”

A little teamwork

Research for the human interaction project initially began in 2010. The team applied to continue its research, and received word this month that it would be given another grant to continue for three more years.

The main focus, Kozlowski said, is to study how a team works in a space similar to a space craft for long periods of time, form data around communication trends and provide new strategies on teamwork.

“All teams have a rhythm with how they interact,” he said. “With the system we’ve developed, we can capture and identify when things that are unexpected are happening.”

For the first leg of research, the team studied the behavior of a group of scientists who spent six weeks camped out on the ice in the Antarctic. Chang, another researcher on the project, said the data collected gave them a better sense of how team members will react to stress or tension.

“Even though compared to the real NASA mission, six weeks is short, we found that the external factors that prevent team members from performing their assigned duty really impacted overall mood of the team: bad weather, bad conditions,” Chang said. “You see a dip in terms of how people feel and are getting along.”

To combat the lack of long-term research on team interaction, Chang said the group has constructed the prototype for a sensor to be strapped onto team members. The device will measure temperature, lighting, voice volume, heart rate and distance between individuals to help the researchers make speculations based on physiological reactions.

Among many other factors, Kundrot said the emotional impact on the astronauts has become a main concern.

“The further away they go from earth, the more difficult interpersonal dynamics in a confined space becomes,” he said. “This is so far out of the realm of normal human experience, and it’s quite a stressor.”

Shape in space

Once in space, astronauts aren’t using their muscles to fight gravity. As a result, Kundrot said, it becomes easy for muscle and bone strength to deteriorate.

“When you go into a weightless atmosphere, you don’t do anything special,” he said. “It’s a lot like being on bed rest. You’re not using muscles or challenging your cardiovascular system.”

With the second grant from NASA, the exercise team will use interactive technology similar to the Wii Fit to motivate astronauts to stay fit by using stationary bicycles.

“Just like anybody with a busy schedule, when push comes to shove, something gets cut short,” Feltz said. “Once you’ve lost (muscle), it’s like the aging process. Once you’ve lost muscle mass, you can’t get that back.”

The group will use the workout created by Lori Ploutz-Snyder, NASA’s project scientist of Exercise Physiology and Countermeasures, which requires about 30 minutes of exercise six days a week. Feltz said the group is designing a virtual partner for each person to work with — one that is slightly superior to the person’s level of output to challenge them.

“They try to match that partner and not be the weakest link,” she said. “The question is, can we make it motivating over a long period of time over the same exercise, six times a week?”

Once the virtual partner is created, the group plans to meet with a focus group at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston for review.

In the real world

Throughout their research, both groups have searched for ways to make the developing software useful in the real world by everyday people.

“It’s important to NASA, and that means it’s important to the American public and U.S. taxpayers that this also has some very practical Earth-based applications,” Feltz said.

Once the virtual workout partner is completed, Feltz said it also could be used by people who don’t have access to a gym or prefer to exercise in the privacy of their home.

“We can do things to help older adults who don’t have access to fitness centers, or for people who have social physique anxiety who don’t want to be out in public spaces with people watching them exercise,” she said.

When it comes to the teamwork study, Kozlowski said the sensor could be used to study employers in the workplace as well.

“What’s really neat about this technology, although built for space, it has a lot of other potential applications,” he said.

“It could be used to look at people in real organizations to monitor how innovation and knowledge-sharing takes place. We’re creating something that doesn’t really yet exist.”

Stephen Hsu, MSU’s vice president for Research and Graduate Studies, said the ventures will continue to improve the university’s nationwide credibility.

“Both of these projects are great examples of the diversity of MSU’s research portfolio,” Hsu said in a statement. “The challenges associated with extended space missions are incredible — it’s great that NASA can turn to MSU for innovative solutions.”