# Designing Procedure Execution Tools with Emerging Technologies for Future Astronauts
## 6 Discussion and Concluding Remarks  
Current space exploration missions rely on procedures to be executed by crew members with full time assistance from MCC. Historically and in spaceflight operations aboard the International Space Station, crew members have relied on extensive paper-based documentation to successfully complete procedures with real time audio assistance from MCC. Real-time communications have ensured procedures are completed with high reliability and efficiency. As NASA ventures into missions beyond low Earth orbit, where communications delays might reach up to 22 min one way, 44 min round trip, this assistance cannot  
Figure 9: (**a**) HoloLens holographic overlays. (**b**) Wristband with ESP8266 chipset. be relied on. NASA and other spaceflight agencies actively research technologies to mitigate risks to crew members associated with long duration spaceflight. Ongoing research addresses how to empower crew members to complete procedures and achieve mission success with greater Earth-independence. As part of this effort, research in emerging technologies aims to ensure crew self-sufficiency when real time communications with ground will not be available. Our research has focused on how emerging technologies augment the efficiency and reliability of crew performance in certain examples of procedure execution. NASA Ames Research Center's HCI team has been evaluating the possibility of emerging technologies as a possible solution to mitigate the risk brought by this new challenge. In LDEMs, crew members are going to be challenged into acting independently to solve these mission-specific issues that might arise. Our team has addressed this research question in four different focuses: the use of emerging technology for the improvement of training, prototype proof-of-concepts using NASA analog missions, developing tools for procedure execution prototypes, and testing the integration between habitat and procedure tools. As a result, these studies have proven that the utilizations of emerging technologies such as augmented reality and Internet of Things sensors have a potential in increasing intuitiveness in procedure execution for crew members, allowing for more user centric procedure experience than current paper-based documents. Through our different research studies, emerging technologies proved beneficial in different aspects of future space flight crew operations. Due to the extended time between training and in-flight procedure execution, skills will have to be provided as just-in-time training. In our first study, it was demonstrated that the use of animated holograms to provide overlayed information allowed an improved performance in maintenance operations. Our following study utilizing analogous domains, such as technician procedure execution at KSC, allowed our team to develop a proof-of-concept tool to improve procedures. Users were ultimately empowered by having a mixed reality interface that allowed them to perform procedures hands-free with clear visibility of procedure steps. Within procedure execution, our next study detailed explored the benefits of AR-enabled tools. Through the headset prototype, users were able to intuitively execute procedures using verbal commands and visual cues. Finally, we investigated the benefits of human-vehicle integrations for efficiency in procedure execution. Here, the IoT allowed users to understand the real-time vehicle state and successfully complete several procedure steps using the interface guidance. Our goal was to identify how best to map emerging technologies to human spaceflight operations tasks. Integrating AR and IoT was most helpful for tasks that require astronauts to conduct work with their hands, such as manual or maintenance tasks. Furthermore, these technologies were also most beneficial in communicating complex procedural instructions. Visualizations of spatially driven instructions were successful in assisting naive, minimally trained users in complete tasks.