Proximity measurements for objective assessments of crew cohesion in an antarctic space analog environment

Astronauts will spend prolonged periods in an isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) spaceflight environment on long-duration space exploration missions. Continuous confinement in close quarters with a few crewmembers will require high levels of crew cohesion to promote mission success and crewmember wellbeing. In the past, the most common measure of crew cohesion were surveys, which tend to have high participant bias. More recently, researchers have analyzed video recordings that provide detailed proximity information but are time consuming to score and prone to interobserver bias. Here, we measured crewmember proximity as a surrogate measure of crew cohesion with proximity sensors worn by crewmembers during two Antarctic 10-14 months winter-over missions (N = 13 in 2015 and N = 12 in 2016). These sensors recorded instances of crewmembers being close in distance to each other, allowing for the identification of trends in crewmember interactions and crewmember withdrawal. We demonstrate that proximity is an unobtrusive, objective, and easy to obtain surrogate measure for crew cohesion that reveals systematic changes with time in mission. This includes a decrease in crew cohesion resulting from more time spent alone as each mission progressed, and higher average crew cohesion scores in Year 1 than in Year 2. Findings from this study could be used to monitor sudden or gradual withdrawal from other crewmembers and provide insights unobtrusively on crew cohesion without compromising crew autonomy.