Analog Astronaut Self-Scheduling in NASA’s HERA Campaign 7

Future deep space missions necessitate greater crew autonomy, including self-scheduling, a capability not available in current spaceflight operations. Within NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA), we researched self-scheduling as a novel concept of operations. Prior HERA Campaign 6 results showed a trend suggesting software visualization countermeasures might improve self-scheduling performance. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the impact of “No-Go Zones” countermeasures within Playbook (an interactive scheduling tool) on analog astronaut crews’ self-scheduling performance and perceived workload during HERA Campaign 7. Performance was assessed via time on task, number of activity movements, and number of violations, while workload was measured using the NASA-TLX. Unexpectedly, the results indicated that the presence of countermeasures was associated with significantly poorer performance: increased time on task, more activity movements, and more violations. No significant impact on workload was observed. A learning effect was evident between scheduling sessions, and Mission Day significantly influenced all outcome measures. Our findings indicate that other operational factors more heavily influence self-scheduling performance than scheduling software and countermeasure aids.