NASA engineers must quantify everything. But no matter how many equations they use to calculate launch windows, estimate exposure to cosmic radiation or create flight trajectories, there’s one thing they can’t quantify: the mental health of astronauts.
And for a while, NASA could get away with it. Early astronauts certainly faced mental challenges — worries over mission failures, the fear of the unknown. But it wasn’t until the arrival of space stations that astronauts began spending months away from home. In 1994, with the building of the International Space Station under way, NASA formed a psychological unit.
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