In recent years, NASA has renewed its focus on manned missions beyond low Earth orbit. These missions will take astronauts to asteroids, the moon, or to Mars. As mission designs become more concrete, it is clear that they will differ from current missions to the International Space Station (ISS) in many ways, including duration, real-time communication with ground, evacuation options, crew rotations, and distance from Earth. These differences will add new challenges to maintaining human health and performance on long-duration exploratory missions (LDEMs). Given the integral nature of teamwork to the success of space missions, differences from current ISS missions will also pose new risk factors to strong team performance over the course of the missions. Factors influencing team performance have previously been identified on past space missions and studies in analogous environments (e.g., submarines, Antarctic research stations). These existing risk factors that affect team performance may be exacerbated on longer space missions in closer quarters, and new risk factors are likely to emerge. Selecting astronauts with the “right stuff” for the new LDEM teams becomes an essential first step in promoting mission success.With this in mind, the purpose of this review is to identify the critical psychological factors, especially those relevant to functioning in a team-based mission, to consider during the astronaut selection process that may mitigate risk factors and enhance team performance. First, a review of the risk factors that have an identified impact on team performance will serve as context for the critical psychological factors to consider in selection. Second, this review will examine the psychological factors to consider in the selection process to best mitigate the risk factors previously identified. Third, selection methods and measures used to evaluate these psychological factors will be identified. Fourth and finally, we will list recommendations for current operations and future research.

This year is remarkable for the Chinese space industry, as it marks the 60th anniversary of its establishment, and also coincides with the expiration of the National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (also widely known as the 863 Program) after three decades. As full participants and the chief scientist of this milestone program for the last decade, we are strongly inspired by the profound role of modern astrodynamics in Chinese space practices. Sharing a common starting point with planetary science, astrodynamics is rooted in the findings of Kepler and Galileo, and its theory was first formulated by Newton. This paper aims to tell the story of the progress and development of astrodynamics in the context of China’s space technology reflected throughout the 30-year-long National Space High-Tech Program: the explosive growth of recent Chinese space missions has been strongly encouraged by the progressing of modern astrodynamics. As the plotline of this article, the milestones of Chinese space flight, most of which were supported by the 863 Program, were collected and organized within the framework of the main achievements in modern astrodynamics, and as it will be demonstrated, these amazing space activities paint a clear picture that can be understood as a part of the great journey of human space exploration.

We propose a search for sources of directed energy systems such as those now becoming technologically feasible on Earth. Recent advances in our own abilities allow us to foresee our own capability that will radically change our ability to broadcast our presence. We show that systems of this type have the ability to be detected at vast distances and indeed can be detected across the entire horizon. This profoundly changes the possibilities for searches for extra-terrestrial technology advanced civilizations. We show that even modest searches can be extremely effective at detecting or limiting many civilization classes. We propose a search strategy, using small Earth based telescopes, that will observe more than 1012 stellar and planetary systems with possible extensions to more than 1020 systems allowing us to test the hypothesis that other similarly or more advanced civilization with this same capability, and are broadcasting, exist. We show that such searches have unity probability of detecting even a single comparably advanced civilization anywhere in our galaxy within a relatively short search time (few years) IF that civilization adopts a simple beacon strategy we call “intelligent targeting”, IF that civilization is beaconing at a wavelength we can detect and IF that civilization left the beacon on long enough for the light to reach us now. In this blind beacon and blind search strategy the civilization does not need to know where we are nor do we need to know where they are. This same basic strategy can be extended to extragalactic distances.

All earth-orbiting spacecraft are susceptible to impacts by orbital debris particles, which can occur at extremely high speeds and can damage flight- and mission-critical systems. The traditional damage mitigating shield design for this threat consists of a “bumper” that is placed at a relatively small distance away from the main “inner wall” of the spacecraft. The performance of a hypervelocity impact shield is typically characterized by its ballistic limit equation, which is typically drawn as a line of demarcation between regions of rear-wall perforation and no perforation; when graphically represented, it is often referred to as a ballistic limit curve. Once developed, these equations and curves can be used to optimize the design of spacecraft wall parameters so that the resulting shields can withstand a wide variety of high-speed impacts by orbital debris. This paper presents some comments and observations on the development of the three-part ballistic limit equation used to predict the response of dual-wall structural systems under hypervelocity projectile impact. The paper concludes with some insights into the limitations of NASA’s current MMOD risk analysis code, and offers several suggestions regarding how it could be modified so that, for example, it could be used as an integral part of a probabilistic risk assessment exercise.

The study of the crew communications with Mission Control Center (MCC) is a standard procedure of remote medical and psychological monitoring of space crews in Federal Space Agency of Russia. The main purpose of this analysis can be considered as obtaining of diagnostic data on the psycho-neurological status affected by space flight factors. The article presents an overview of the results of 20years investigations of the crew communications with MCC in the series of ground experiments with isolation and confinement, and in the pilot study aboard the International State Station (ISS), as well. The special attention was paid to the evolution of methodological approaches to the study of speech. The main results of the crew communications studies under the effects of space flight factors are presented, the basic phenomena of its dynamics under the conditions of long-term isolation, sensory deprivation, monotony, autonomy and communication delay are considered. The prospects of studying the space crew communications within the frame of onboard experiment “Content” are discussed.