has approved a restart of a $1-million grant to the University of Â鶹´«Ã½ at Mānoa’s (HI-SEAS) project. The research program funded by NASA has operated five long-duration planetary surface missions on the Mars-like flank of Mauna Loa to investigate crew composition and cohesion, since 2012.
HI-SEAS Mission VI was cancelled February 26, after one of the four crew members withdrew. A few days earlier, an accident involving a crew member triggered an institutional review by UH and NASA, which has since been completed, and the project has been approved to go forward.
The NASA Human Research Roadmap has a tight timeline to enable human exploration of the solar system. So, rather than conduct a new Mission VII, NASA asked the HI-SEAS team to rescope the final phase of the project to cover data mining over the six-year life of the project, and the development of a comprehensive database. NASA is providing additional funds for a more robust version of the data analysis than had already been planned for the end of the six HI-SEAS missions.
Principal Investigator and UH Mānoa Professor Kim Binsted said, “We¡¯re excited to be able to put the 36 months¡¯ worth of mission data we¡¯ve collected over the past five years to good use: advancing human space exploration.”
Under the new grant, HI-SEAS will:
- Perform data mining of all HI-SEAS data (Missions I–V) related to team composition, including investigation of individual personalities, cognitive function and behavioral health changes, as all of these influence team performance.
- Develop a database of all HI-SEAS data funded by NASA to include data from HI-SEAS collaborators.
HI-SEAS investigators expect to complete the data collection and analysis by the end of 2019.