Assessment of the State of Communication Delay Research in Preparation for Missions Beyond Low Earth Orbit

On missions beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO), communication delays will challenge the traditional mission operations paradigm, reducing ground support and increasing the need for crew autonomy. Communication delays have been known to negatively impact crew behavioral health and performance and to affect the coordination and cohesion of the space-to-ground team. However, research remains to be done to comprehensively assess the issues associated with communication delays and what is needed to overcome them. Our literature review surveyed evidence generated through 20 years of communication delay research to build a picture of what has been studied and how, and to identify gaps in the evidence base that threaten upcoming mission priorities. The gap in studies of short communication delays (i.e., 3 to 14 seconds one-way) possible on lunar missions is of particular interest. We also interviewed subject matter experts, including Flight Operations Personnel, former analog (e.g., Human Exploration Research Analog [HERA]; Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog [CHAPEA]) crewmembers, and researchers who study communication delay to identify knowledge gaps and research priorities for upcoming analog missions. Our analysis reveals a general lack of fidelity in studies of mission-critical tasks, including problem solving, emergency response, maintenance, and complex procedure execution—likely due to the prioritization of safety and mission objectives in analog missions. There remains a pressing need to study the impact of different delays in combination with specific tasks, contexts, and environments to adequately characterize the risk of reduced ground support for missions to the Moon and Mars. Countermeasures, including training specific to communication delay and tools to facilitate asynchronous collaboration, that may mitigate the impact of communication delay need to be designed and evaluated for specific contexts (i.e., chatting with family vs. getting a briefing from the ground on a maintenance procedure).