Space and Spaceflight: Implications for Organizations

Spaceflight research examines a very high-performing population: astronauts. These men and women work in an isolated, confined, and extreme environment that requires careful assessment, selection, training, and job stress management support from industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists. In addition, NASA has an extensive network of research and operational personnel (e.g., Mission Control) that supports space missions. Mission success requires high levels of individual and team performance across this network for the maintenance of crew psychological health and well-being. The extreme and complex environment of spaceflight pushes I-O research and application to new and exciting frontiers and has important implications for organizations back on earth.

Current space operations focus on the International Space Station (ISS), a habitat roughly the length of a football field orbiting earth where ...