Promoting Crew Autonomy in a Human Spaceflight Earth Analog Mission through Self-Scheduling

Deep space exploration missions face the challenge of communication transmission latencies between ground stations and astronaut crews due to increasing distance between the Earth and spacecraft in transit. To address this, research at NASA has aimed toward supporting crew autonomy by enabling astronauts to schedule their own timelines with minimal oversight from Mission Control. While self-scheduling has been shown to be feasible, it is yet to be studied as an integral part of autonomous crew operations. The current paper reviews the operationalization of self-scheduling and a number of related objectives during Campaign 6 of HERA, a Human Exploration Research Analog. Research objectives include studying the effects of phasic autonomy over the course of a 45-day mission, evaluating differences in scheduling performance produced by software interface aids, and deploying a novel measure of crew attitudes toward self-scheduling and plan execution.