Human Factors Challenges Identified by US Participation in the MIR Missions

Abstract

Seven NASA astronauts have visited the Mir Russian Space Station for extended periods of time. This goal of this Panel Session, featuring three of these crew-members, is to examine the challenges experienced during these long duration missions, and how these experiences can help prepare for missions to the International Space Station. The goals of this session are:

1. 1)

To acquaint attendees at the '99 AM with some of the challenges which arose during the Mir missions on the part of the US crew-members,

2)

To identify differences between the short duration Shuttle and extended duration Mir missions,

3)

To challenge attendees of this session to think in terms of Human Factors (HF) oriented solutions to these identified challenges and differences,

4)

To solicit inputs from the session attendees relative to potential HFE solutions to the identified issues.

These Mir missions provided the first long-duration on-orbit experience for US crew members since Skylab.