The success of future long duration exploration missions (LDEM) is likely to be contingent on the crew S ability to adjust in response to environment demands. There has been recent interest in team…

This federal contract award to The Group For Organizational Effectiveness, Inc. (GroupOE) was issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Shared Services Center. The $699,996 grant is for a research program to study team adaptation and resilience in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments, which is critical for the success of future long-duration exploration missions (LDEM). The research will first examine the impact of environmental triggers on team adaptation, then investigate antecedents and outcomes of adaptation, and finally develop and test team countermeasures to promote constructive adaptation and resilience. The program will leverage data from prior research in analog environments like the HERA habitat, as well as a field setting involving teams working in ice conditions in the oil and gas industry. This contract did not have a set-aside designation.

The success of future long duration exploration missions (LDEM) is likely to be contingent on the crew S ability to adjust in response to environment demands. There has been recent interest in team adaptation and resilience in the scientific community, but researchers have noted the need to clarify those constructs. We propose a program of research to: a) clarify and better understand these constructs, in particular with how they operate in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments and B) based on that enhanced understanding, develop and test targeted countermeasures designed to boost the adaptability and resilience of LDEM crews. Work conducted by maynard and colleagues (2015), supplemented by the team resilience work of alliger ET AL. (in press) all members of our research team provides a road map for the proposed research. We will first examine the impact of different environmental triggers on team adaptation, incorporating an event taxonomy and categorization schema with which to assess experiences and trigger events. This will allow US to index the types of challenges that LDEM crews will confront. We will test a series of related hypotheses using archival data we collected in prior research in the hera habitat. We will then examine antecedents and outcomes of adaptation, gathering data in two analog environments. Finally, based on the theoretical and preliminary empirical work, we will develop team countermeasures designed to promote constructive team adaptation and team resilience, and during years 2 and 3, test those countermeasures in analog environments. One of our test environments will be a field setting that involves teams that work in ICE conditions in the oil and gas industry. The second test environment will be a NASA analog, such as neemo or hera, which will provide the opportunity to test the usability of the countermeasures.