What is it?

Shelter in Space is an engaging and fun smart phone-based app that integrates with existing wellness, self-improvement, and social connection apps to create an immersive, gamified space mission scenario while providing citizen science data for COVID19 and Human Space Flight research.

Why is it important?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 4.5 billion people are living under social distancing measures worldwide [12], triggering a wide variety of psychological problems such as panic disorder, anxiety, and depression [13].

Shelter in Space is a gamified mental and physical health countermeasure application using widely available and accessible technologies to help users fulfill a sense of belonging and purpose, and positive social interaction.

Sense of belonging is widely recognized as a highly influential interpersonal process on mental and physical health [10], and social interaction with digital gaming players in virtual communities has been found to have a positive influence on the mental health of those suffering from adverse cognitive and behavioral effects due to COVID-19-related losses of societal connection [14].

Prolonged isolation and confinement of astronauts in human space missions and citizens practicing social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are linked to adverse behavioral and physical conditions, including insomnia, anxiety disorders, and depression [13, 24]. Early detection and prevention of isolation-induced adverse conditions are critical to the success of space missions [16].

While astronauts on low-orbit missions such as the International Space Station can receive real-time medical advice from ground medical personnel [16], future long-range missions, characterized by communication delays, must depend on new approaches via asynchronous telemedicine or self-treatment methods- methods which have been identified as having open research gaps [15]. Similarly, to lower the probability of transmission of COVID-19, telemedicine and self-treatment methods are increasing in practice globally [19].

Early detection and implementation of countermeasures for isolation-induced adverse conditions greatly increase the probability of success [16]. Sleep disruption is a simple and common diagnostic criteria for many psychiatric disorders [17], and serves as a reliable early warning sign for major depression [18].

Shelter in Space encourages users to link to one of several common, third-party sleep diagnostic apps and provides adaptive countermeasures based on severity of disorder (i.e. self-treatment vs. telemedicine), and possible disrupting factor(s) (e.g. low sunlight during day, caffeine intake, noise, temperature, etc.) based on NASA’s latest countermeasure guidelines [16]. Additionally, the adequacy of nutrition and food enjoyment becomes increasingly important in the harsh environments of isolation and confinement, where other comforts and familiarity may be unavailable [20]. Accordingly, Shelter in Space includes a focus on meal planning and nutrition-based recommendations, utilizing NASA’s nutrition analysis tools [21] and integrations with other popular online based applications.

What does it do?

The Shelter in Space app has four critical functions:

1. A gamified experience that provides users with organizational and wellness tools that consider human capabilities and limitations through identification of causal factors;
2. A social connection app which encourages interpersonal connection, collaboration, and support through virtual means.
3. An improvement app that facilitates learning and exploration of NASA and STEAM-related subject matters to improve mental and physical health while learning about NASA’s (and other space agencies’ around the world) space programs.
4. A crowd-sourced citizen science data project which provides objective health measures and subjective user feedback to improve social isolation guidance for NASA.

Ensuring long-term engagement and personal connections with reward-based gamification

External motivation in the form of reward-based gamification encourages immediate, short-term behavioral changes [23]. Long-term behavioral modifications may be adopted through intrinsic motivation, which can be developed through meaningful gamification [22]. Shelter in Space employs critical game design elements to encourage mastery of social isolation countermeasures such that external rewards are no longer necessary for continued use recent gamification research [22].Critical game design elements include:

• Play -users have the freedom to explore and fail within boundaries through collaborative, space-themed mission-specific STEM challenges.
• Exposition - space-themed mission narratives are integrated with real-world settings (i.e. work, life) and unique parallels between COVID-19-related social isolation/confinement conditions and space travel.
• Choice and Reward- users are empowered to design their own missions, form crews, and make decisions regarding mission objectives, resulting in the allocation of rewards such as level increases, unlocking of special events, and the ultimate reward- a real-life phone call to astronauts on the International Space Station!
• Information- space-themed game design is based on real space mission data (e.g. weather, atmospheric conditions, mission objectives and imagery) [7, 8], health-based recommendations are derived from NASA’s Human Research Program countermeasures protocols [16], and real-time local and global COVID-19 health data and guidelines are integrated into the user experience [11-13], allowing participants to learn more about the real-world context.
• Engagement - users are encouraged to discover and learn from other crew members and real astronauts (e.g. Chris Hadfield) through prompts and communication reminders, scheduled check-ins, virtual live special events, and ability to meet and discuss with new crew members via chat-rooms;
• Reflection - users are encouraged to reflect upon their progress through daily mission briefings and health dashboard notifications as well as prompts for diary logs.

Crowd-sourced citizen science data project to support human spaceflight

For decades, NASA has utilized unobtrusive, software-based measurement of behavioral health indicators (e.g., mood, cognitive function, physical and mental fatigue, sleep quality) to develop an integrated standardized suite of behavioral health measurement tools to mitigate effects of prolonged isolation and confinement [1] using both in-space and ground-based analog facilities [2].

However, further research is needed to identify and validate countermeasures that promote individual behavioral health and performance to allow for inter-planetary exploration missions, in which long-term (>1 year) confinement and isolation are required [3]. Furthermore, recent studies have documented the existence of large stable (trait-like) differences among individuals in the degree of cognitive deficits experienced during isolation and confinement, making the development of “one-size-fits-all” countermeasures ineffective [4].

Accordingly, large datasets with both a diverse cohort and multitude of individual behavioral health objective measures are needed to develop the predictive power of personalized countermeasures, such as self-guided stress management and resilience training [5].

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced billions of global citizens into social isolation, providing both a widespread need for science and technology-based guidance to mitigate impacts of isolation-caused adverse behavioral and cognitive conditions, while also providing an unprecedented research opportunity to improve countermeasures by enrolling an enormous number of participants in ground-based analog missions as citizen scientists.

Shelter in Space unobtrusively collects objective physiological, neurological, and behavioral health metrics in combination with a machine learning A/B platform to customize countermeasures to reduce risks from adverse cognitive and behavioral effects induced by COVID-19 social isolation and confinement.

What do we hope to achieve?

The scale and impact of the consequences of COVID19 have created unprecedented challenges for billions of people all around the world. From personal grief over the loss of loved ones to macroeconomic effects driving soaring unemployment and failing markets, fear and anxiety about the future are peaking, and many pre-existing societal issues are being compounded.

For us, human space travel and exploration represents the pinnacle of human creativity and our ability to solve complex problems through unbounded collaboration and curiosity. We hope to share that sense of optimism and ingenuity as widely as possible and put it to use against our current state of crisis. We hope that by exploring their inner astronaut, more people will strive towards addressing the underlying global issues that make our current systems vulnerable to widespread negative effects, while also coming together to re-envision a more resilient and sustainable relationship to our “Spaceship Earth.”

How does it work?

Transform yourself into a virtual analog astronaut and do some citizen science along the way!

1. Choose your Mission
   • Pick your mission based on a real space mission to Mars, the Moon, the ISS, or even Europa!
   • Each mission with unique commitment levels, science-based’ challenges, relevant EO and space-based data sources, and collaborative user experiences
2. Form your Crew
   • Invite other crew members and/or get matched
   • Maintain Relationships through daily video chats and weekly crew member check-ins
     • Integrations with popular social apps: (e.g. Zoom, HouseParty, FaceBook Messenger, Instagram, etc)
   • Collect, analyze, and discuss metrics on communication and cohesion - How often are communications occuring? What quality (subjective)?
     • Gain support and accountability by sharing and discussing your objectives with crew members
   • Make new relationships through chat rooms and virtual events
   • Receive NASA-informed psychosocial health tips [9]
3. Optimize your Reality
   • Seamlessly connect to popular physical, nutritional, mental integrity, educational, and wellness apps and trackers (e.g. Headspace, Coursera, Khan Academy, FitBit, SleepCycle, MyFitnessPlan etc). Partnerships with technology providers can enable customized plans that are available to users of the app.
   • Integrate health-based metrics (e.g. sleep quality/quantity, body temperature, caloric intake/nutrition, resting and active heart rate) into live health dashboard.
   • Complete NASA tests such as the psychomotor vigilance self test [6] to assess your cognitive performance
   • Hitting your goals ensures your mission progresses well, and in-app + real world rewards encourage and motivate users
     • Get video messages from analog and real astronauts with tips on how to thrive in social isolation, as well as problem solving skills from scientists, engineers, and other space agency/community employees.
4. View the World like an Astronaut
   • Develop an “overview effect” perspective of the Earth by accessing real-time imagery from satellites,the International Space Station, extra-terrestrial rovers, and astronomy telescopes. Interact with exclusive content and campaigns that encourage users to explore earth and space science topics.
   • Receive updates on global-scale events, including COVID19 news updates and data, NASA news, and environmental incidences/phenomenon (e.g. hurricanes, eclipses wildfires, climate change impacts, etc.) hurricanes, eclipses, and other planetary phenomenon.
   • Receive daily updates and challenges triggered by real-time mission objectives and parameters from the InSight mission to Mars, including weather, atmospheric levels, and photos taken by the Mars InSight Rover [7, 8]
5. Complete your Mission
   • Complete in bonus science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) related challenges to progress your mission or maintain your space station
   • Team cooperation and collaboration is vital to success!
   • View metrics and reports and help your team identify problem areas and celebrate progress!
   • See your contributions as a citizen scientist

Our future plans would be to continuously expand content campaigns, integrations, and further develop machine learning powered ai to help users identify trends and make sense of their data. We’d love to add more missions and find ways to incorporate new educational modules and space-based datasources. We would also like to explore adding mini-games and external partnerships that bring the experience outside the app. For areas on the globe that may not have access to the integrated tools, we hope to be able to identify any particular needs and to help make suggestions and develop solutions.