LINCOLN PARK — DePaul University's Suzanne Bell 3-year-old son wants to be an astronaut.
If by some slim chance that happens, his mom's research could play a role in determining whether he — or another astronaut — is a good candidate to travel to Mars.
Bell, an associate professor of psychology, is conducting research on the effects of long-term space missions for NASA, like a three-year round trip to Mars.
"It's really neat to think, I may in a very small way, shape who goes to Mars,'' Bell said.
About a year ago, NASA reached out to Bell as an expert in team composition to conduct research on the compatibility between team members on such a mission.
One interesting finding of the research that gained the attention of science journals and magazines was that extroverts, or highly social people, might not fit in well aboard a capsule headed to Mars.
While generally you want to include an extrovert on a team, being an extrovert showed up as a problem in Bell's research. Typically outspoken, opinionated and easily bored, an extrovert could annoy other crew members, Bell found.
In the past, Bell has worked with teams preparing to deploy to Afghanistan who later worked together and lived together in smaller-than-ideal confines.
But the Mars trip presents a unique journey with no precedent.
Part of the research has included gathering information on studies from climates that resemble the circumstances on the Red Planet such as polar expeditions.
Another example that Bell has studied are simulations of isolation such as the Mars 500, which placed six men in a mockup spacecraft for 520 days.
That experiment was conducted by Russia, the European Space Agency and China to prepare for a manned flight to Mars.
Bell's next step after compiling research from earlier studies was to interview astronauts, mission control and other members of NASA to fill in the blanks where previous studies might have missed.
The point is to identify for NASA where their future research needs to go over the next 10 years.
The current NASA-funded study is set to be completed this year, but the space work has sparked a newfound interest for Bell.
She hopes to help conduct future NASA studies that will place humans in isolation at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"What happens now if you live in a space habitat on Mars and it’s the size of your bedroom, and there's four of you or six of you just stuck in a space that big, and you just had a big fight about a work-related issue and you now live together?" she said.
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