The results are under review for future publication. Sleep restriction in this mission was defined as getting five hours or less per night, and the FCL studied how alertness and performance are affected over 45 days of a restricted sleep schedule. Missions here are treated like real space missions, with a crew of four simulating many aspects of astronaut life – including sleep loss. The Fatigue Countermeasures Lab completed a study in the Human Exploration Research Analog facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. On flights of 10 to 15 hours, pilots take turns sleeping in a bunk, and this work is looking at the best way to time those rest breaks for pilots who will handle the task of landing, ensuring they feel rested and alert.Ĭredits: NASA/Ames Research Center/Dominic Hart Spaceflight Studies In a joint study with American Airlines, Washington State University and United Airlines, the FCL is working on determining the optimal time for pilots to rest during long-haul flights. The lab is now working to see if providing pilots with bright light in the morning, to mimic sunrise, will help them get more sleep and perform better when they must get up early. They found that pilots get less sleep and feel sleepier when they have to start work early in the morning compared to later in the day. In a study with a short-haul airline, the Fatigue Countermeasures Lab investigated how starting work early or ending work late affects performance. If this field testing reveals new problems, the team goes back to the lab to refine the approach.īy learning how sleep and its bedfellows interact – that includes alertness and circadian phase, or where you fall in your usual sleep/wake cycle at a given moment – the FCL team can explore solutions to help people manage fatigue and do their jobs safely. For these primary areas of the FCL’s research, the process is the same: test solutions in the lab and then put them to use in the aviation or spaceflight environment. In space, how sleep might be different away from Earth is an area of ongoing study, and the Fatigue Countermeasures Lab works closely with NASA’s astronaut program. The lab studies ways to optimize their schedules to minimize these effects. In aviation, pilots face the challenges of early rises, long shifts and jet lag on the job. The realms for these tasks can be as diverse as aviation and spaceflight, NASA space mission operations, military settings and operating self-driving cars. The Fatigue Countermeasures Lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley, studies the way fatigue affects people with complex tasks to perform. But for people with jobs where it’s critical to be alert and able to think quickly and clearly, feeling fatigued from sleep loss, jet lag, shift work or waking up groggy can be a problem. For many of us, it’s OK to feel a little sleepy at your desk after lunch.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |