As the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, individuals applied social isolation themselves to avoid disease. On lockdown, countries applied many of social isolation rules that decrease social contact and obligates people to stay at home. During this adaptation period, people encounter some difficulties and problems. The problems due to social isolation essentially comprise three perspectives such as the disruption in the daily routine cycle,  mental health issues, and reducing interactions with their surroundings. The characteristics of these pandemic days are very similar to the aspects of astronauts’ experience in space missions. NASA has already done many studies and projects that focus on the adaptation process of an astronaut for social isolation and found several solutions for these faced problems as well. Inspiring the vision of NASA for astronauts adapting isolated life in space, our project wants to establish an idea to solve challenging problems due to social isolation. The purpose of the Project is to make socially isolated people feel like an astronaut in a spaceship.  Also give them a gamificated task in the lead of an artificial  based on a real experienced astronaut. as a result, bring them a motivation to become more physically and mentally active in their daily lives.

Being proper on a regular routine is a challenging problem for even normal times not only socially isolated times. However, it has become a massive problem these days. People’s daily cycles and routines are collapsed. In social isolation, People tend to have different numbers of hours of sleep at different times of their days. Such a distribution of the daily sleep cycle may ruin the weakness and efficient sleep time which are crucial to our biological circadian rhythm.*

Additionally, Normally people have regular routines which they have to wake up and get ready for them. such as schools, jobs, etc. However, in quarantine, they should arrange their daily routine for these working times. Keeping track of the time, and even the days, can be hard without typical time like going to the office, attending lectures, or going to the gym. Also, they have plenty of free time. They are not capable of running their time adequately for work and leisure time because they have not experienced such an isolated situation. Because of these challenges, people are facing enormous time management problems.

Social isolation is a deficit in normal human social interaction, which has been associated with negative mental health outcomes. Distributions of the life cycle tend to affect our health because sleeping is the underpinning point for our biological hormonal system.* If a person is not physically healthy, he cannot be mental. Well -being depends on both physical and mental health. The two of obtrusive psychological problems in  Covid-19  are the feeling of depression and loneliness.* People may have anxiety about the spread of Covid-19. The other psychological problem is the absence of motivation. People could not leave their old habits and not be easily adapted to do work when they stuck at home. They are not willing to do something as considered before-pandemic times.*

The other effect of social isolation on our lives is decreasing connection among society. People have become more individual these days. They cannot physically contact their loved ones except their families and the people shared home. In his research, Psychology Cacioppo states that Lack of social support can lead to mental sluggishness that impairs productivity, stifles creativity, and hinders decision-making.* Therefore, The social distancing between working groups may lead to an obvious drop in the productivity of their works because while they are working together people support and motivate each other. Also students’ ability for learning is restricted when they have to be apart from classes. It seems that the separation of groups makes the peoples alone, less productive. Additionally, social activities or mixing socially with others are pleasant times of our normal times. Nowadays, these times have totally disappeared. So the effect of that will be unhappiness and depression for the people.

NASA has already done hundreds of researches about many of the problems encountered during the social isolation of Covid-19, They make a very specified time schedule for astronauts, they have overcome many physiological and social problems. Thanks to these works,  they come up with new ideas for Astronauts’ adaptation process for long-term isolation projects.  They investigate real-time experiments for how humans behave in abnormal situations. Also, NASA has lots of content about the life cycle of astronauts, their shared experience, and how they adapt themself to this isolated life. After many of these trials in the Word and shared real- space experience, NASA has an impressive method to overcome social-isolation related problems. Although NASA’s experiment and their standards are very specified by extreme conditions, we can use the concept of NASA to implement a solution.

While our team is trying to specify the problems related to challenging topics, we identify the link between social isolation problems and existing but not efficiently used solutions in NASA sources. This project tries to find the core of astronauts’ motivation underlying the adaptation process to isolated life. Using this concept, we want to come up with an encouragement for remodeling people’s isolated lives.  in our solution, we create an astronaut profile for each user with specified tasks and timetables. In this process, we focused on gamification of these tasks. Creating these profiles,   in the game, the users can feel the motivation of being in a spaceship and space mission. Thanks to this motivation, they push themselves to fulfill their daily goals.  Also the project plans to implement a direct connection between astronaut experiments of isolation and users. Thanks to a schematic astronaut mentor(real astronauts) , users can interactively learn the basics of having ideal endurance from their role models. And finally, project solutions focused on how to be astronauts are socially connected.

Before going into detailed solutions,Our project may offer NASA a collection of massive data for testing their models and applications for astronauts. As discussed in the report, NASA has already  funded and performed several experiments in order to observe the characteristic of human behavior in isolated lives. Many of these experiments are held in Antarctica or several isolated areas. The pandemic negatively affected our lives. On the other side, nowadays, every home is an experimental area for NASA to analyze people’s behavior in isolated life. The feedback may be useful for the upcoming space- mission of NASA such as the colonization of mars and many of the projects that required long-isolated experience. The project uses the Model which NASA uses for astronauts adapting in an isolated lifestyle. We try to apply this model to Socially isolated people all around the word and make their life better and give them an opportunity to find their optimal routine.  After using their feedback, behavior in their mission cycles, and the data pool, NASA may see the pros and cons, in an effortless way, even if they revise and make better their isolated mission models.

In the community, because of the difficulties and necessities of their job, astronauts have high-level status and respect. We can see them in a childhood dream or a futuristic argument, so we can easily say that astronauts have gained public love with their missions. That’s why while we are designing our program, we decided to create an iconic character as an astronaut for effecting people in a sympathetic way. As the planning of this idea, we aim to create an avatar that guides users in the method they like. Astronaut icon will be our face which we show to user. Therefore, we will be solved problems that users may not obey the time schedule by using gamification and, users don’t feel like they are under the command . While they are playing the game, they will be managed their lives and enjoy it.

Being on a regular routine is the key to astronaut’s lifestyle in space. They have a list of missions in a fixed schedule. This contains every detail that astronauts have to obey the very carefully. In astronaut Scoot Kelly's interview, he said that their sleeping hours has planned before the mission started, they feel that they were working even while sleeping. As we discussed in the problems they have to complete several missions. We know that most people struggle with time management. However, they don't know how to make it happen. At this point, the project combines NASA’s approach with this management problem. Astronauts in our artificial word may be role models for peoples.  because of operating their periodic actions, we will help them to use their free time effectively. The first and most important step for preparing a schedule is sleeping and efficient time operating As we see from researches, although there is no morning or night in space, NASA designs sleeping hours depends on circadian rhythm.

By inspiring this perspective, we want to keep people awake in the mornings and adjust their sleeping time at night .Starting with sleeping time and considering the user working period, our application plans a timetable for users by using artificial intelligence. the first difference between spaceship and quarantine comes up here . In a spaceship, astronauts do their own job but a person in quarantine has no mission to do. We expect to solve this problem by giving an opportunity to users to set their own goals. Thus, people can manage their free time as effectively as they can. and after a while, they will find themselves as they achieved their goals. While we program in our free time we focus on hobbies.

After optimizing the time schedule we have solved an important part of the problems but not at all. there are some others such as psychological or mental problems.there is a big collaboration between physical activity and mental health.NASA obligates the astronauts to do sports in their space missions, As NASA did, we attach our users’ timetables physical activities such as running, dancing, yoga etc. therefore we keep our users physical and mental health at regular and considerable levels. Another problem is motivation. people can demoralize in this term and in the schedule as we see astronauts. As we considered astronaut Anne McClain’s interview, she said “ we are going to miss it when it is over.”. she motivates herself with this argument to manage her free time effectively. By using her motivation, we are going to set people’s encouragement to manage time by reminding them that they will need this free time when the breakdown is over. It will be an obvious motivation for all the people who have less working time and plenty of free space. We also add an extra interaction between the users by creating a competitive option.because of this option users can see other people profiles and they can be friends and also they can challenge each other, thus they will be created a motivation for themselves.

as the nature of human beings,, we need to be socialized. this breakdown gets us away from social environments, that' why most of the people feel like alone and even if they make something to be active, they don't feel as they expected to.then we look again to how NASA solving this situation.and we figured out these highlights: group working, communication with other people and sending gift are the most important points. for group work, we add our application events which people can share the same entertainment and space. For the communucatıon title, we used interaction with other people which is already described by matching with people who have the same hobbies and goals. We could be good buddies to communicate and have fun.  According to The article ‘ loneliness of the long-duration astronaut ‘ written by Cooper HSF, the Two most important antidotes which work well to eliminate monotony in the space environment are surprise gifts and family interviews. Using this reel experience, our project implements sending gifts as a solution of making connections strong with friends that we are obligated to apart.

Here is the link of our user interface schematics:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KFv-0n49d8aNWMP519AxnoSVmDr0nf7w/view?usp=sharing

here is the link of our demonstration video of our project:

 https://youtu.be/sNyCeu2yK74

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/an-astronaut-s-tips-for-living-in-space-or-anywhere

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Astronauts_Work.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_and_sociological_effects_of_spaceflight

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem-on-station/ditl_morning_routine

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem-on-station/ditl_exercising

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem-on-station/ditl_free_time

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem-on-station/ditl_sleeping

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Astronauts/Daily_life

https://www.space.com/what-is-quarantine-like-for-astronauts-coronavirus.html

https://iss.jaxa.jp/kids/en/life/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46sixz9Z4A

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1prO1uzcSQ

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1FYk1lkdh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBVUTFPate0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQA-pE2luQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkquLlyB32k

Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, Volume 76, Supplement 1, June 2005, pp. B94-B107(14)

(Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015)

Holt-Lunstad J, Smith T, Baker M, Harris T, Stephenson D. Loneliness, and social isolation as risk factors for mortality. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2015;10: 227–237. Pmid:25910392

Cacioppo S, Capitanio JP, Cacioppo JT. Toward a neurology of loneliness. Psychol Bull. 2014; 140(6):1464-504.