Future long duration exploration missions will require astronauts to spend prolonged periods in isolated and confined environments. Combined with sensory deprivation, loss of social connection, and a demanding workload, these factors can adversely affect an astronaut’s mood and stress levels. This places astronauts at an increased risk of developing adverse behavioral health conditions, which can cause performance decrements and jeopardize mission success. Current countermeasures used on the ISS will become increasingly difficult to use as missions venture further from Earth and begin to encounter significant communication delays. Virtual reality (VR) technology is a promising countermeasure, and continual advancements in VR technology have made it more robust and portable. Our lab is currently investigating the potential of VR technologies to enhance behavioral health and reduce stress. We have constructed a nature-inspired VR environment with digital scents that will be dispersed based on the user’s location in the VR environment. To measure levels of stress, we are using a combination of subjective questionnaires and physiological measurements, such as electrodermal activity. We hope to see that the addition of olfactory stimuli will further immerse the user and more effectively reduce stress. Preliminary experiments have delivered promising results, and future work will incorporate stimuli for additional senses.
VR also has the potential to aid in fulfilling astronauts’ social needs. When synchronous communication is not possible, astronauts could receive virtual care packages in VR from loved ones instead to fortify their connectedness to home. These virtual care packages could also utilize the non-traditional stimuli from the nature-inspired environments. Additionally, we will use physiological and subjective data collected from these experiments to produce machine learning algorithms that could predict individual responses to stress and possibly aid in the selection of astronauts.