Teams in Space Exploration: A New Frontier for the Science of Team Effectiveness

Researchers from a variety of disciplines are currently working with NASA to prepare for human exploration of Mars in the next decades. Such exploration will take scientific discovery to new heights, providing unprecedented information about the geology, atmosphere, and potential for life on Mars, including previous life, current life, and perhaps even our own lives in the future. To make these unparalleled discoveries, however, astronauts will need to undertake a novel and unprecedented journey. Moreover, the mission to Mars will require a team of crew members who will have to endure and sustain team performance requirements never seen before. Multidisciplinary teams of scientists have begun to provide the needed steps to address this challenge. The purpose of this article is (a) to illustrate the kinds of new conceptual frameworks and paradigms needed for teams in space exploration, (b) to delineate promising research paths to ensure that a robust team science can emerge for long-duration space exploration (LDSE), (c) to showcase initial findings and insights from studying astronauts now, and (d) to outline a plan of action for team-effectiveness research in LDSE.