Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: THE ASTRONAUT STRESS-TESTER

by Hazed

When an astronaut needs to undertake some tricky work, such as piloting a space shuttle in a docking maneuver or performing some intricate task on a spacewalk, he or she needs to be calm, cool and collected. But how do you ensure that the space-person isn't overtired, or stressed out, or a bit crazy, or otherwise not up to the job?

You use a new invention that has come out of Pennsylvania University's Unit for Experimental Psychiatry - the Psychomotor Vigilance Task, or PVT. This is a gizmo that lets the astronaut take a three-minute test which involves pressing buttons when lights come on, and is meant to judge whether they are in a fit state to do whatever it is they have to do.

David Dinges, who invented the PVT, says, "In high-performance jobs like an astronaut's, you want them as close to optimal performance as you can get them all the time." All the time? What, they aren't allowed to relax at all, or go to sleep occasionally?

Dinges developed the device while working with "aquanauts" in NASA's underwater space habitat simulator off the Florida coast. There's no word yet as to whether NASA will adopt this stress-testing gadget. Or whether actually using it will cause the astronauts even more stress!

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