{"id":198644,"date":"2025-10-08T20:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T20:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198644\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T20:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T20:43:10","slug":"do-you-have-what-it-takes-experts-reveal-what-mars-astronauts-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198644\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you have what it takes? Experts reveal what Mars astronauts need"},"content":{"rendered":"

Putting astronauts on Mars<\/a> is one of the next big goals for humans in space. But who will those astronauts be?<\/p>\n

Missions to Mars are likely to last up to three years, with astronauts enduring prolonged confinement, limited living spaces, and – to put it mildly – high levels of mutual responsibility.<\/p>\n

In such an environment, you might think a singular kind of person was needed – a Rambo, or a Sarah Connor, somebody diligent, determined, and mission-focused.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Astronauts aboard the International Space Station. (NASA)<\/p>\n

That’s not entirely wrong – but it’s not the whole story.<\/p>\n

In fact, according to new research, putting together a whole team of people who think and act exactly the same way is a swift recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

Iser Pena and Hao Chen of the Stevens Univeristy of Technology in the US say in their new study that diverse personalities \ufeffare the key to space-based success.<\/p>\n

“The absence of personal space and privacy exacerbates stress levels, potentially affecting team cohesion and performance,” the authors said in a release.<\/p>\n

“Understanding and optimising team dynamics under these extreme conditions is crucial, as effective collaboration, stress management, and psychological support systems are essential for the success of long-duration space missions.”<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Artemis missions are already in motion. (AP)<\/p>\n

Using advanced methodology and psychological knowledge, the researchers modelled how five personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness – matched mission roles such as engineer, medic, or pilot.<\/p>\n

Diverse teams performed generally better than teams composed of similar personality types, they found.<\/p>\n

They showed lower stress levels, improved performance, cohesion\ufeff, and health.<\/p>\n

\"NASA'sThis image provided by NASA shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover taking a selfie, made up of 62 individual images on July 23, 2024. (AP)<\/p>\n

This suggested that a broader mix of coping styles and interpersonal dynamics might help teams maintain stability over time.<\/p>\n

“For the first time, we’ve combined psychological insights with a computer simulation to model a 500-day mission to Mars,” the authors said.<\/p>\n

“This new approach lets us explore how different astronaut personalities and team roles might affect a crew’s stress and performance, and it gives us a glimpse of the human challenges astronauts could face on these long journeys into deep space.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Putting astronauts on Mars is one of the next big goals for humans in space. But who will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-198644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}