ABSTRACT
As missions travel further from Earth, the communication between space crewmembers and ground support will be significantly delayed; for a mission to Mars the time lag can be up to 20 minutes one way. Communication delays will also pose a formidable challenge to the collaboration between crewmembers and ground support because they may degrade team members’ communication efficiency and ultimately hinder their joint task success. It is essential to explore solutions that focus on the communication process itself, and we describe one such approach. Specifically, we developed a communication protocol to facilitate space-ground collaboration under time-delayed conditions, and assessed its effectiveness during several simulated missions in different space-analog environments.
