Stress, Isolation and Coping in Simulated Space Environments: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

While technical reliability is important, psychological reliability is needed for long duration space exploration because people in isolated, confined and extreme environments need to be psychologically hardy. Some of the other spaces that can be simulated to study stress, social isolation, monotony, diminished privacy, communication delays and other psychosocial issues prior to the actual long-duration mission are space-analogue habitats, polar stations, confinement chambers and mission simulations. A qualitative study which adopts thematic synthesis approach was conducted to review literature since 2020 to explore the experience of stress and isolation of simulated space environments, and the coping mechanism that is consistently linked to wellbeing and performance. The analysis resulted in five themes: (1) stress is perceived as a cumulative and phase-sensitive demand, (2) isolation is perceived as change of connection, not as separation, (3) coping is assisted by structure, routine and self-regulation, (4) coping processes in the environment and online need to preserve autonomy, privacy and trust, (5) team coping is a process of collective protection and adaptation. The results suggest that coping is not just a sole individual psychological ability, but a multilevel phenomenon affected by aspects of the habitat, mission programmes, autonomy, communication, norms, social support and access to meaningful activities. This study suggests that adaptation to the psychological aspects of long duration missions needs to be built as a whole package, with a mix of individual coping strategies, supportive team procedures, environmental design and reliable technological countermeasures.