NASA Wants To Know How Astronauts Can Get Along Better

Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station are keeping personal diaries. No, not the "Dear Diary" kind; the kind where they'll write "brutally honest" personal thoughts about living aboard a spacecraft in close, cramped quarters with two others for six months.

Astronauts Sunita Williams and Michael Lopez-Alegria are participating. They're to document their thoughts, feelings, moods, what they miss, how they're getting along with the other astronauts, etc., three times each week in a personal journal.

The journals will go to Jack Stuster, a Santa Barbara, CA-based researcher who uses them to measure morale aboard the ISS.

Shortly before she arrived at the space station in December, Sunita Williams told the Associated Press, "It comes out looking like a gossip column, I'm sure. But the point is to identify characteristics that will make expeditions successful."

Stuster has had access to ISS journals since 2003. The results of his investigation are intended to help NASA and other space agencies better prepare their astronauts for long stays aboard the ISS, and even longer stays on the Moon and even Mars.

A NASA publication titled "Bioastronautics Roadmap" documents incidents of ill-will between some US and Russian crew members.

The document reads in part, "Interpersonal distrust, dislike, misunderstanding and poor communication have led to potentially dangerous situations, such as crew members refusing to speak to each other during critical operations, or withdrawing from voice communications with ground controllers."

Stuster, who holds an anthropology doctorate, has also studied French doctors living in Antarctica -- an isolation situation similar to living in space. He classifies journal entries by tone -- positive, negative or neutral -- and time, noting the quarter in which it was made. He says astronauts, like the French doctors in Antarctica, suffer from the "third-quarter blues." Stuster says entries made in the third quarter are the most negative.

At least one former astronaut, Leroy Chiao, used the journal keeping as a form of self-aid. Chiao, who lived aboard the ISS in 2004 and 2005, said, "I used it almost as a therapy for myself -- if I were upset about something or frustrated, I'd write that out," adding some of his entries were rather long.

FMI: www.nasa.gov