Space Human Factors Research: NASA’s Human Capabilities Assessments for Autonomous Missions

Abstract

Over the past 7 years, NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP) has invested in seven projects investigating various space human factor issues related to supporting more autonomous crewed missions. Collectively known as a Virtual NASA Specialized Center of Research (VNSCOR) for Human Capabilities Assessments for Autonomous Missions (HCAAM), HCAAM researchers conducted controlled lab experiments in their respective home institutions as well as in NASA’s isolation analog research facility called Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA). Each research grant contributed to assessing and measuring human performance, identifying methods to augment, extend, or improve performance, and validating proposed countermeasures that support autonomous missions. The topics addressed procedure design, procedure execution support, use of mixed reality platforms for operational tasks, complex self-scheduling, long-duration methods for crew task performance, trust in automation, and virtual assistants. This panel discusses research outcomes as it relates to space human factors engineering.

Keywords

space human factors analog research crew autonomy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbott

Karasinski

J. A.

Marquez

J. J.

(2025, March). Characterizing spontaneous self-scheduling in NASA’s human exploration research analog campaign 6. In 46th international IEEE aerospace conference, Big Sky, MT, USA.

Allred

A. R.

Weiss

Clark

T. K.

Stirling

(2024). An augmented reality hand-eye sensorimotor impairment assessment for spaceflight operations. Aerospace Medicine & Human Performance, 95(2), 69–78.

Chiou

E. K.

Lee

J. D.

(2021). Trusting automation: Designing for responsivity and resilience. Human Factors, 65(1), 137–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187208211009995

Karasinski

Bresina

Kanefsky

Shyr

Marquez

(2022). Towards a characterization of scheduling task complexity. In AIAA SCITECH 2022 forum, San Diego, CA, USA, p. 1412.

Karasinski

J. A.

Torron Valverde

I. C.

Brosnahan

H. L.

Gale

J. W.

Kim

Yashar

Marquez

J. J.

(2021). Designing procedure execution tools with emerging technologies for future astronauts. Applied Sciences, 11(4), Article 1607.

Erickson

I. M.

Cross

E. V.

Lee

J. D.

(2023). It’s not only what you say, but also how you say it: Machine learning approach to estimate trust from conversation. Human Factors, 66(6), 1724–1741. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187208231166624

Kamaraj

A. V.

Lee

J. D.

(2023). Modeling trust dimensions and dynamics in human-agent conversation: A trajectory epistemic network analysis approach. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 40(14), 3571–3582. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2201555

Marquez

J. J.

Edwards

Karasinski

J. A.

Lee

C. N.

Shyr

M. C.

Miller

C. L.

Brandt

S. L.

(2021). Human performance of novice schedulers for complex spaceflight operations timelines. Human Factors, 65(6), 1183–1198. https://doi.org/10.1177/00187208211058913

Shelat

Homer

K. E.

Karasinski

J. A.

Marquez

J. J.

(2025). Multidimensional usability assessment in spaceflight analog missions. In SpaceCHI 2025, Cologne, Germany.

10.

Weiss

Tang

Williams

Stirling

(2024). Performance on a target acquisition task differs between augmented reality and touch screen displays. Applied Ergonomics, 116, Article 104185.

11.

Weiss

Stirling

(2024). Augmented reality assessments to support human spaceflight performance evaluation. Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, 95(11), 831–840.