Wanted: Mars Explorers. Must Be Able To Tolerate Boredom And Play Nice With Others.

FiveThirtyEight:

In December, NASA put out a call for adventurers interested in interplanetary exploration. “NASA is on an ambitious journey to Mars and we’re looking for talented men and women from diverse backgrounds and every walk of life to help get us there,” Charles Bolden, NASA administrator and a former astronaut, said in the announcement. More than 18,000 people answered the call, and between now and mid-2017, that vast pool of applications will be cut to 120 finalists, who will vie to become part of NASA’s next class of eight to 12 astronauts.

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Researchers involved in HI-SEAS are working on ways to defuse conflicts, and the first step is spotting them before anyone blows up. A team led by psychologist Steve Kozlowski at Michigan State University has developed wireless badges that include proximity sensors. The idea is that everybody on the crew would wear one, and the badges then provide a metric for quantifying how much time people spend near one another. “It’s a way to measure team cohesion,” Roma said. The data could serve as an early-warning system to flag when someone is isolating herself or avoiding a particular person.

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