The degree of sleep loss and circadian misalignment experienced by astronauts is unclear, but similar patterns of long bouts of waking and short sleep episodes have been associated with attentional failures and performance impairment among other high-performing cohorts on Earth ( Lockley et al., 2004). In addition, they report sleeping less on nights prior to critical tasks and can be required to “slam shift,” staying awake for many hours to adjust their sleep schedules in advance of a rendezvous with a visiting vehicle ( Barger et al., 2014). Crewmembers aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle sleep less in space relative to on Earth ( Barger et al., 2014 Gonfalone, 2016) and they spend approximately 1 out of every 5 days in a circadian misaligned state ( Flynn-Evans et al., 2015). Studies with additional participants and extended pre-training on the ROBoT-r task should be conducted to disentangle how brain activity may change as individuals learn and habituate to complex tasks during sleep loss.Īlertness and performance fluctuate according to prior sleep history and circadian time of day ( Dijk et al., 1992). It is possible that some ROBoT-r metrics may be sensitive to sleep loss after longer bouts of wakefulness or after individuals have habituated to the task. These findings suggest that individuals may be able to temporarily compensate for sleep loss to maintain performance on complex, novel tasks. Performance on the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) followed an expected profile, with reduced performance across the night. Overall, participants showed improvement over time despite sleep loss, indicating continued learning. We investigated whether ROBoT-r metrics would change according to sleep loss and circadian phase in a 28-h laboratory-based sleep deprivation study. Thus, a research version of ROBoT, called ROBoT-r, was developed so that operationally relevant data could be mined to provide feedback to crewmembers.

The operational ROBoT system, however, does not record data. It is regularly used by crewmembers during spaceflight for refresher training. The Robotics On-Board Trainer (ROBoT) task is NASA’s platform for training astronauts to perform docking and grappling maneuvers. Consequently, it is imperative that crewmembers have objective, reliable, and non-invasive metrics available to aid them in determining their fitness for duty prior to engaging in potentially dangerous tasks. Mission support personnel will not be immediately available to assist crewmembers performing complex operations on future long-duration exploration operations. Exploration of deep space poses many challenges.

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