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Spaceflight presents a unique environment in which multiteam coordination is often required for mission success. This chapter will explore the topic of multiteam systems (MTSs) and their functioning in this environment.

This chapter describes the MTS case of human spaceflight in terms of a specific subset of the system involved in current human spaceflight missions: NASA Mission Control and the NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. In addition to describing the system itself, this chapter describes notable advantages and disadvantages of this particular MTS, along with potential future issues in human spaceflight and research directions for use of MTSs in spaceflight.

More than 40 years of successful human spaceflight missions have demonstrated many of the benefits and drawbacks of MTSs across some of the most challenging environments faced by any teams attempting coordination. These environmental challenges include extreme distances, limited modes of communication, complex systems, novel problems, and coordination between teams from multiple countries with differing goals and priorities. The specific advantages and drawbacks of MTSs in this environment, and the impacts of the aforementioned environmental challenges, are discussed.

This chapter examines a known operational and successful MTS that operates in an environment in which many of the standard assumptions regarding teams and MTSs may not apply.

This chapter describes how Astronaut and Aerospace Engineer, Jeanette Epps, dealt with the ambiguity of being pulled from a space flight by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), leveraged emotional intelligence to adapt to the challenge, solidified valuable leadership lessons on resilience, courage, and vulnerability, and provides advice for female leaders on navigating the leadership labyrinth. Fundamentally, the hardship Epps experienced deepened her sense of purpose and leadership identity, making her an exceptional role model for female leaders everywhere.

Space tourism is often represented as an extended version of tourism on the Earth, with tourists experiencing relaxed and trouble-free experiences. But parallels between travel on the Earth and in outer space are misleading. The latter raises major issues concerning power-relations between passengers, pilots, and ground control. Who has the power in space tourism and how is this power exercised? The literature underestimates potential dangers to the human body. These include short- and long-term risks stemming from microgravity, exposure to radiation, and rapidly changing switches between day and night. These problems further undermine the popular image of space tourism as a wholesome and joyous practice. Space tourism may well be a very expensive way of achieving ill health.

To better understand contributing factors and mediating mechanisms related to team dynamics in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments.

Literature review.

Our primary focus is on cohesion and adaptation – two critical aspects of team performance in ICE environments that have received increased attention in both the literature and funding initiatives. We begin by describing the conditions that define ICE environments and review relevant individual biological, neuropsychiatric, and environmental factors that interact with team dynamics. We then outline a unifying team cohesion framework for long-duration missions and discuss several environmental, operational, organizational, and psychosocial factors that can impact team dynamics. Finally, we end with a discussion of directions for future research and countermeasure development, emphasizing the importance of temporal dynamics, multidisciplinary integration, and novel conceptual frameworks for the inherently mixed work and social setting of long-duration missions in ICE environments.

A better understanding of team dynamics over time can contribute to success in a variety of organizational settings, including space exploration, defense and security, business, education, athletics, and social relationships.

We promote a multidisciplinary approach to team dynamics in ICE environments that incorporates dynamic biological, behavioral, psychological, and organizational factors over time.

New technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), have helped us begin to take our first steps off Earth and into outer space. But conflicts inevitably will arise and, in the absence of settled governance, may be resolved by force, as is typical for new frontiers. But the terrestrial assumptions behind the ethics of war will need to be rethought when the context radically changes, and both the environment of space and the advent of robotic warfighters with superhuman capabilities will constitute such a radical change. This essay examines how new autonomous technologies, especially dual-use technologies, and the challenges to human existence in space will force us to rethink the ethics of war, both from space to Earth, and in space itself.