How NASA, astronauts, and psychologists are tackling the mental toll o

Jamey Simpson was 10 when he watched the space shuttle lift off from Kennedy Space Center with his mother, astronaut Cady Coleman, on board. A voice from a hand-held radio counted down as fire spewed from the rocket and propelled it skyward in a chest-crushing roar.

Now 23, Jamey recalls the existential weight that followed. “It was in that moment, I realized, `My mom is really gone and she’s not on the planet anymore.’”

Space: The Longest Goodbye, which premieres March 8 in theaters and on Amazon and AppleTV, is not your typical NASA documentary. Instead of the heroics, danger, and fanfare of space travel, this 90-minute film takes a quieter look inward at the mental toll that long-term space travel takes on astronauts and their families. The push for a burgeoning lunar economy and years-long missions to Mars demands a better grasp of how well humans contend with extended isolation, close living and working conditions, and separation from loved ones. Not to mention, the needs of those anxiously awaiting their safe return. It ranks among the biggest hurdles of long space hauls.

“To be completely honest, I kind of stumbled on it,” director Ido Mizrahy tells Fast Company. “I wasn’t really a space geek going into it.” The Israeli-born, Manhattan-based filmmaker had previously mined grittier narratives: the most-gored bullfighter in Gored, a corrupt New York cop in Patrolman P. So when he began scouting a film on the potential for a manned mission to Mars, he went looking beyond the flash. “I kept saying, `This is a great canvas, but what’s going to be our story?”

It wasn’t until he met NASA psychologist Al Holland that he found his answer. In the ’80s, while developing the International Space Station, NASA recruited Holland to form a unit providing psychological support to astronauts. “That really basic human angle on this friction between wanting to go really far and needing to hang on to where you came from in your roots was something that just spoke to me,” says Mizrahy.

The film highlights Holland’s insights and NASA research into potential solutions that read like a sci-fi novel—virtual reality escapes to Earth akin to Star Trek’s Holodeck, an A.I. robot therapist, and medically induced hibernation.

The VR program circumvents the lack of real-time communications due to Mars’ distance by recreating a virtual spouse in a calm pastoral environment. The actual spouse could have NASA transmit a recording from Earth to the program that the astronaut could receive later through the virtual spouse. An A.I.-powered computerized orb with a digital face named Simon is programmed for conversations with astronauts who want to vent to a non-crew member. Mars simulations on Earth help troubleshoot problem areas for long-term missions that might see astronauts confined to a capsule the size of a motorhome for a year-round trip to and from Mars, and a slightly larger habitat for 18 months on-site. The European Space Agency is investigating whether it’s possible to induce hibernation in astronauts to reduce mental stress, radiation exposure, and metabolic energy consumption.

The film also addresses the delicate challenge that psychological studies present to astronauts wanting to contribute needed data but concerned that oversharing might jeopardize their mission spot. “We went to great lengths to protect their information,” Holland relays in the film. “It’s taken us years to develop trust. If you lose that trust, you may as well pack up and go home.”

NASA has already applied some of its findings to Earthbound problems, like the 2010 rescue of the trapped Chilean miners. In that situation, it connected miners with their families through live AV feeds and by matching their Circadian cycles to keep them calm until rescue. “It validated what we were doing in a new environment,” says Holland.

Astronaut Kayla Barron spent six months on the ISS between 2021 and 2022 and is part of the Artemis program returning humans to the moon and possibly Mars. “It’s this crazy experience emotionally,” she says in the film. “It’s the pinnacle of your professional career, you’ve been training for it for years, it’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done—and then you invite all of your friends and family to come watch it.”

“Forget for a moment that my spouse is on top of this ball of fire,” adds her husband, Tom Barron, a U.S. Special Forces officer. “It’s an extraordinary visceral experience. I had a knot in my chest, for sure. One of the ways we’ve been able to take these risks is by asking, `Can I imagine you doing anything else? And if it went wrong, is this the thing you ought to have been doing?’”

When Kayla initially decided to apply to the astronaut program, she and Tom held earnest discussions on how they might balance the demands of their respective service with building a marriage, starting a family, and single parenting while she was in space. “The biggest challenge will be when we have kids,” Tom says in the film. “Are kids even old enough to comprehend what she’s doing or old enough to be a part of that decision?”

That tensity was all too familiar to Coleman, now retired from the astronaut corps with a book, Sharing Space, arriving this summer. She journeyed to space three times between 1995 and 2011—at one point coaching Sandra Bullock from the ISS in preparation for her role in Gravity. Jamey was in fourth grade during her six months in orbit in 2010-11. The archived footage of Coleman’s video calls with Jamey and her artist husband Josh Simpson illustrates a separation moving from novelty (like Coleman’s flute duet from space with Jamey) to frustration (at one point Jamey, angry over his mother’s extended absence, refuses to join a chat). Coleman, who adored her time onboard and sense of purpose during the mission, was also clearly pained by his hurt. At one point, she wipes away a tear as she reaches for her son’s stuffed tiger as it floats by.

“I certainly cried a bunch when I watched this movie for the first time with Jamey,” Coleman says to Fast Company. “But it’s all part of the journey. And it’s a very human part of what we do.”

Ido’s unconventional take appealed to Coleman. “Ido came with questions that nobody else had asked that I thought were really important ones about the very human aspect of space flight, that isn’t really talked about a lot,” she says. “And I appreciated that Ido was going to make a film that told people more about the whole picture of exploration and what we need to learn in order to go further.”

During Coleman’s space shuttle days, “crew support” meant a crew secretary liaising with astronaut families, ensuring deliveries of care packages, and looping them into ISS concerns before they hit the news. She believes such outreach efforts to families have increased further.

“We talk a lot at NASA about the technological friction, getting things right,” says Coleman. “But in the past, for human-related friction, we assumed that if everyone did their best, it would be enough. But that kind of friction, both internal and external, is very real. And bringing it out in the open is really good for everybody.”

Near detour into space

Despite his self-professed lack of space nerd cred, Mizrahy got sucked in when his early research connected him with Peggy Wu, a scientist combining psychology and design. Wu was developing virtual environments for astronauts on long-duration space missions and their families to spend time together past the point of real-time communications.

“I thought it was so brilliant and applicable to so many types of relationships on Earth, especially as we move into the future, as people live more away from their families and in different time zones,” says Mizrahy. “I completely forgot that I was a filmmaker. I stopped researching this documentary and I started working with Peggy.”

The pair submitted a proposal to NASA that incorporated Mizrahy’s documentary-style filmmaking into Wu’s VR concept. “We got pretty close to being funded by NASA, but didn’t, which is good, because that allowed me to make this film,” he says.

It was Wu who introduced Mizrahy to Coleman, who granted access to some 40 hours of home movies and ISS video footage of family chats. Mizrahy chose each segment and explained its place in the story to Coleman and her family, who approved its use and context. Coleman also gave Jamey space for his own interview. “I didn’t get to hear some of those things until we watched the film together,” she says.

Jamey, now a photographer, serves up his experiences in a visceral, visual style. “Jamey is extraordinary,” says Mizrahy. “His life is unlike many kids’ lives. So, every question I had for Jamey was truly the most impulsive question I wanted to ask. When you make a documentary, you want to feel like the moments that subjects are telling you about feel alive in that moment. There’s something about him where those lived experiences are still very palpable.”

In time, as humans become more accustomed to extended space travel, their psychology might begin to adapt in a manner akin to how the pandemic redefined relationships through computer monitors. Coleman hints at this when she recalls her own shift in thinking.

When she first contemplated living in space, “I always thought I would be far away,” she says. “But then when I was there, I didn’t feel like I wasn’t home. I just thought home was bigger than we ever thought.”

Jamey Simpson was 10 when he watched the space shuttle lift off from Kennedy Space Center with his mother, astronaut Cady Coleman, on board. A voice from a hand-held radio counted down as fire spewed from the rocket and propelled it skyward in a chest-crushing roar.

Now 23, Jamey recalls the existential weight that followed. “It was in that moment, I realized, `My mom is really gone and she’s not on the planet anymore.’”

Space: The Longest Goodbye, which premieres March 8 in theaters and on Amazon and AppleTV, is not your typical NASA documentary. Instead of the heroics, danger, and fanfare of space travel, this 90-minute film takes a quieter look inward at the mental toll that long-term space travel takes on astronauts and their families. The push for a burgeoning lunar economy and years-long missions to Mars demands a better grasp of how well humans contend with extended isolation, close living and working conditions, and separation from loved ones. Not to mention, the needs of those anxiously awaiting their safe return. It ranks among the biggest hurdles of long space hauls.

“To be completely honest, I kind of stumbled on it,” director Ido Mizrahy tells Fast Company. “I wasn’t really a space geek going into it.” The Israeli-born, Manhattan-based filmmaker had previously mined grittier narratives: the most-gored bullfighter in Gored, a corrupt New York cop in Patrolman P. So when he began scouting a film on the potential for a manned mission to Mars, he went looking beyond the flash. “I kept saying, `This is a great canvas, but what’s going to be our story?”

It wasn’t until he met NASA psychologist Al Holland that he found his answer. In the ’80s, while developing the International Space Station, NASA recruited Holland to form a unit providing psychological support to astronauts. “That really basic human angle on this friction between wanting to go really far and needing to hang on to where you came from in your roots was something that just spoke to me,” says Mizrahy.

The film highlights Holland’s insights and NASA research into potential solutions that read like a sci-fi novel—virtual reality escapes to Earth akin to Star Trek’s Holodeck, an A.I. robot therapist, and medically induced hibernation.

The VR program circumvents the lack of real-time communications due to Mars’ distance by recreating a virtual spouse in a calm pastoral environment. The actual spouse could have NASA transmit a recording from Earth to the program that the astronaut could receive later through the virtual spouse. An A.I.-powered computerized orb with a digital face named Simon is programmed for conversations with astronauts who want to vent to a non-crew member. Mars simulations on Earth help troubleshoot problem areas for long-term missions that might see astronauts confined to a capsule the size of a motorhome for a year-round trip to and from Mars, and a slightly larger habitat for 18 months on-site. The European Space Agency is investigating whether it’s possible to induce hibernation in astronauts to reduce mental stress, radiation exposure, and metabolic energy consumption.

The film also addresses the delicate challenge that psychological studies present to astronauts wanting to contribute needed data but concerned that oversharing might jeopardize their mission spot. “We went to great lengths to protect their information,” Holland relays in the film. “It’s taken us years to develop trust. If you lose that trust, you may as well pack up and go home.”

NASA has already applied some of its findings to Earthbound problems, like the 2010 rescue of the trapped Chilean miners. In that situation, it connected miners with their families through live AV feeds and by matching their Circadian cycles to keep them calm until rescue. “It validated what we were doing in a new environment,” says Holland.

Astronaut Kayla Barron spent six months on the ISS between 2021 and 2022 and is part of the Artemis program returning humans to the moon and possibly Mars. “It’s this crazy experience emotionally,” she says in the film. “It’s the pinnacle of your professional career, you’ve been training for it for years, it’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done—and then you invite all of your friends and family to come watch it.”

“Forget for a moment that my spouse is on top of this ball of fire,” adds her husband, Tom Barron, a U.S. Special Forces officer. “It’s an extraordinary visceral experience. I had a knot in my chest, for sure. One of the ways we’ve been able to take these risks is by asking, `Can I imagine you doing anything else? And if it went wrong, is this the thing you ought to have been doing?’”

When Kayla initially decided to apply to the astronaut program, she and Tom held earnest discussions on how they might balance the demands of their respective service with building a marriage, starting a family, and single parenting while she was in space. “The biggest challenge will be when we have kids,” Tom says in the film. “Are kids even old enough to comprehend what she’s doing or old enough to be a part of that decision?”

That tensity was all too familiar to Coleman, now retired from the astronaut corps with a book, Sharing Space, arriving this summer. She journeyed to space three times between 1995 and 2011—at one point coaching Sandra Bullock from the ISS in preparation for her role in Gravity. Jamey was in fourth grade during her six months in orbit in 2010-11. The archived footage of Coleman’s video calls with Jamey and her artist husband Josh Simpson illustrates a separation moving from novelty (like Coleman’s flute duet from space with Jamey) to frustration (at one point Jamey, angry over his mother’s extended absence, refuses to join a chat). Coleman, who adored her time onboard and sense of purpose during the mission, was also clearly pained by his hurt. At one point, she wipes away a tear as she reaches for her son’s stuffed tiger as it floats by.

“I certainly cried a bunch when I watched this movie for the first time with Jamey,” Coleman says to Fast Company. “But it’s all part of the journey. And it’s a very human part of what we do.”

Ido’s unconventional take appealed to Coleman. “Ido came with questions that nobody else had asked that I thought were really important ones about the very human aspect of space flight, that isn’t really talked about a lot,” she says. “And I appreciated that Ido was going to make a film that told people more about the whole picture of exploration and what we need to learn in order to go further.”

During Coleman’s space shuttle days, “crew support” meant a crew secretary liaising with astronaut families, ensuring deliveries of care packages, and looping them into ISS concerns before they hit the news. She believes such outreach efforts to families have increased further.

“We talk a lot at NASA about the technological friction, getting things right,” says Coleman. “But in the past, for human-related friction, we assumed that if everyone did their best, it would be enough. But that kind of friction, both internal and external, is very real. And bringing it out in the open is really good for everybody.”

Near detour into space

Despite his self-professed lack of space nerd cred, Mizrahy got sucked in when his early research connected him with Peggy Wu, a scientist combining psychology and design. Wu was developing virtual environments for astronauts on long-duration space missions and their families to spend time together past the point of real-time communications.

“I thought it was so brilliant and applicable to so many types of relationships on Earth, especially as we move into the future, as people live more away from their families and in different time zones,” says Mizrahy. “I completely forgot that I was a filmmaker. I stopped researching this documentary and I started working with Peggy.”

The pair submitted a proposal to NASA that incorporated Mizrahy’s documentary-style filmmaking into Wu’s VR concept. “We got pretty close to being funded by NASA, but didn’t, which is good, because that allowed me to make this film,” he says.

It was Wu who introduced Mizrahy to Coleman, who granted access to some 40 hours of home movies and ISS video footage of family chats. Mizrahy chose each segment and explained its place in the story to Coleman and her family, who approved its use and context. Coleman also gave Jamey space for his own interview. “I didn’t get to hear some of those things until we watched the film together,” she says.

Jamey, now a photographer, serves up his experiences in a visceral, visual style. “Jamey is extraordinary,” says Mizrahy. “His life is unlike many kids’ lives. So, every question I had for Jamey was truly the most impulsive question I wanted to ask. When you make a documentary, you want to feel like the moments that subjects are telling you about feel alive in that moment. There’s something about him where those lived experiences are still very palpable.”

In time, as humans become more accustomed to extended space travel, their psychology might begin to adapt in a manner akin to how the pandemic redefined relationships through computer monitors. Coleman hints at this when she recalls her own shift in thinking.

When she first contemplated living in space, “I always thought I would be far away,” she says. “But then when I was there, I didn’t feel like I wasn’t home. I just thought home was bigger than we ever thought.”