CLOSING THE GAPS IN BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AND PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

While research is usually viewed as a process, a work in progress, in NASA's Human Research Program (HRP), it is viewed as a product. Each of the individual research elements within HRP is charged with carrying out a scientific program of focused, applied research critical to managing and mitigating human system risk for exploration missions. Risk to the human system, accrues from living and working in the spaceflight environment and can affect the astronaut's performance in carrying out the mission, or his or her health during spaceflight, with additional vested interest in mitigating health risks following spaceflight. Exploration missions to the lunar surface, even the shorter sortie missions, will have inherent behavioral health and performance challenges for the crews manning those missions, both in flight and on the ground. This presentation showcases the BHP research element and its successful strategy for transitioning research to medical and mission operations. It will focus on the sleep, fatigue and workload risk and provide a specific example how the research lines up from the evidence base to the deliverable and transitions into the hands of the practitioners - in this case - for medical or mission operations.