MARTIAN DELIGHT

Keywords: Deep Space Communication, Qualitative Contact, Communication Tool, Reward System, Delight
Publication: Lee, C.H, and Balint, T, (2020). Martian Delight: Exploring Qualitative Contact for Decoupled Communications, 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Dubai, UAE.--PDF

Exploring farther into our solar system for planetary exploration will require the human crews to reside in their space transfer habitats for a long period of time. These explorers will also face isolation, owing to the sheer physical distance from the Earth, which may eventually affect their health and well-being. Furthermore, looking at a trip to Mars, astronauts will have to wait for at least forty minutes to receive updated round communications from Earth, due to the time it takes for the signal to travel the separation distance at the speed of light. Thus, when it comes to long duration crewed space missions, communication and the feeling of connection with their loved ones—friends and family—on Earth is crucial for the astronauts’ well-being. In this context, exploring a new communication approach for long-duration spaceflight seems necessary for our missions to Mars. This project attempts to introduce a new way of decoupled communication that enables astronauts to connect with their feelings towards their  oved ones on Earth via embedded interactions, focusing on the idea of “qualitative contact”.  

​Project Martian Delight is a communication system—developed together with a principal Human-Centered Designer Dr. Tibor Balint at JPL NASA—that enables an astronaut to qualitatively contact their loved ones on Earth through decoupled communications during deep space exploration missions.

The constructed prototype is a proof of concept that enables the qualitative contact via a reward system  by locating a hidden reward within the device, namely, inside a red egg. Within the device, there is a tangible gift or surprise from an astronaut’s family or friends on Earth. Nevertheless, the egg is locked and can be opened only if the owner of this egg—the astronaut— completes their tasks during their long-duration space mission. These tasks may vary, and typically related to the astronauts’ psychological or physical exercise and well-being. For example, an astronaut would require to exercise consistently for 2 hours every day for a month in order to unlock their allocated egg/reward, or they have to consume healthy foods to maintain their health for a certain period of time. The device would receive a signal once the owner completes their tasks. Once the device receives this signal the egg/reward will follow the track and fly out from the transparent container, propelled by airflow (or “wind”) produced by an actuator within the microgravity environment.

While the reward system encourages crews to actively engage and keep their healthy daily activities through a progression, it also provides a sense of accomplishment/delight once they unlock the egg. In turn, this is expected to result in psychological and physiological support towards the astronaut’s well-being. The reward would be usually a meaningful or memorable physical item that connects the feeling of both parties—family and astronaut. Although the current prototype can only contain one physical item—one task—per device, our final device is aiming to contain about 20 different physical items/ rewards per device. Considering a mission to Mars would take about 1000 days, one single reward in a device is insufficient. Instead of one single reward, multiple rewards can motivate astronauts to look forward to their subsequent surprises from their loved ones over the course of their journey. This would support the crew’s well-being by improving the feeling of connection, and therefore contribute to a successful long-distance/ duration space mission.

In the meantime, family or friends on Earth may also imagine their family/friend—the astronaut—being able to take care of their well-being, while they are isolated on their deep space mission. For this nested object approach we were originally inspired by the Matryoshka dolls—a set of wooden dolls of decreasing sizes, placed one inside another—in terms of how it may delightfully surprise people. In future prototypes and working towards a final design, we are planning to employ this type of nested format to minimize the size of multiple rewards to fit into a single device. However, the sizes of physical rewards might be different; therefore, we have to reconsider practicality of such an idea. We are considering using a vacuuming method, an olfactory interaction method, a hand-written text method, and many others approaches to shrink the sizes of rewards for our next prototype.   ​
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