The story of two astronauts stranded in space may sound like a plot from a Hollywood blockbuster movie, but for two NASA crew members, it is now reality. Commander Barry Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams are currently in uncertainty on the International Space Station (ISS).
They arrived in a Boeing Starliner spacecraft – the first test of the spacecraft with astronauts. Wilmore and Williams were supposed to stay on the ISS for about eight days and return in the same spacecraft. But now there is a debate about the safety of the Starliner as helium leaks and thruster problems have surfaced on the way to the ISS.
In the coming days, NASA and Boeing could decide to approve Starliner to take astronauts back to Earth. That means their stay there might not be too long. But if officials decide against Starliner, astronauts would have to wait another six months in orbit before returning. So how will astronauts cope with a potential six-month wait to get back home?
Waiting for something is the hardest thing. Under normal circumstances, it is frustrating, stressful, and anxiety-provoking. But in extreme situations, when there is a lot at stake, waiting can be torturous.
One of the reasons waiting is difficult is that it distorts our sense of time. Think about the last time you waited for a delayed train, an exam result or a message from a potential new partner. Did it pass quickly or very slowly? For most people, time spent waiting passes very slowly. As a result, periods of delay and anticipation often seem much longer than they really are.
Waiting slows down our perception of time, because it changes the amount of time we spend thinking about time. In normal daily life we often ignore time; our brain has a limited capacity. If time is not important, we don’t think about it, and this makes time pass quickly.
When we are waiting, our desire to know when the wait will end tends to exacerbate our perception of time. This “clock-watching” can make the minutes and hours feel like they are passing at a snail’s pace. Stress, discomfort, and pain further exacerbate this effect, meaning that in difficult circumstances waiting can feel even longer.
Waiting also slows down our perception of time because it slows down what we do and how we feel. Normal life is busy and full of constantly changing activities and interactions. The sudden need to wait stops the flow of life, often leaving us with nothing to do, increasing the level of boredom and frustration.
Generally, time filled with activity passes more quickly. We all got a taste of this during the COVID lockdown. When we were stuck indoors, unable to meet friends and engage in normal daily activities, the loss of routine and distractions made time seem much shorter for many people.
For the astronauts stranded on the ISS, anxiety about when they will return, limited opportunities for activities and fewer chances to contact friends and families can make the wait to return home seem longer than six months — if it even happens.
However, as academics researching the effects of time on human psychology and biology, our ongoing work with crew members at research stations in Antarctica aims to shed light on whether waiting in extreme environments differs from waiting during normal daily life.
a year in antarctica
Being stranded on the ISS for six months may sound like the worst nightmare to many, but it’s not uncommon for scientists to be exposed to isolated and extreme environments for long periods of time. Each year, organizations such as the Instituto Antarctico Argentino (which uses the Belgrano II Antarctic Station), the French Polar Institute, and the Italian Antarctic Program, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (which all use Antarctica’s Concordia Station), send crews of people for up to 16 months to conduct research on the frozen continent.
During the polar winter from March to October, teams spend six months in near darkness – and from May to August, in complete darkness – facing outside temperatures of up to -60°C, wind speeds of up to 160 km/h (100 mph) and storms that prevent almost all outdoor activities. Limited internet coverage can also prevent sustained communication with the outside world.
For the past year we have been researching how life in Antarctica affects people’s experience of time. Each month, we asked crew members how time was passing compared to before their mission. Being stranded on base and with limited contact with the outside world, you might feel that time is passing slowly. However, our results suggest that the opposite may also be true.
Analysis of crew members’ experiences showed that being constantly engaged in complex tasks such as scientific research helped time pass faster, according to 80% of crew responses. Only 3% of responses indicated that time actually passed slower, and these reports were made when nights were long and there was little work to do.
These experiences could be a ray of hope for those stranded on the ISS. Like life on the Antarctic station, the lives of these NASA astronauts are also hectic and mentally challenging. These factors could help the time pass quickly.
However, a key factor in their waiting may be their ability to tolerate the uncertainty of when they will return. Wilmore and Williams will spend their time in the space equivalent of the inside of a Boeing 747 aircraft. But better information about “when” things will happen and “why” delays are occurring may help people tolerate the wait and reduce its impact on their well-being.
,Author: Ruth Ogden, Professor of the Psychology of Time, Liverpool John Moores University and Daniel Eduardo Vigo, Senior Researcher in Chronobiology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina)
,disclosure statement: Ruth Ogden receives funding from the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council, CHANSE and Horizon 2020. This article was written as part of the Wellcome Trust project “After the End” 225238/Z/22/Z. The work reported in this article has been carried out in collaboration with ESA and the IIA as part of the SPACE-TIME project. Daniel Vigo is a Research Career Award winner from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and Senior Professor at the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA). The work reported in this article has been carried out as part of a collaboration between UCA, CONICET, the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA), the Joint Antarctic Command and the Health Coordination of the Ministry of Defense, under the framework of an agreement signed between the European Space Agency (ESA), the IAA and the National Commission on Space Activities (CONAE).
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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