title: Performance Assessment in the PILOT Experiment On Board Space Stations Mir and ISS.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The aim of this investigation into the performance and reliability of Russian cosmonauts in hand-controlled docking of a spacecraft on a space station (experiment PILOT) was to enhance overall mission safety and crew training efficiency. The preliminary findings on the Mir space station suggested that a break in docking training of about 90 d significantly degraded performance.
  
  
  METHODS
  Intensified experiment schedules on the International Space Station (ISS) have allowed for a monthly experiment using an on-board simulator. Therefore, instead of just three training tasks as on Mir, five training flights per session have been implemented on the ISS. This experiment was run in parallel but independently of the operational docking training the cosmonauts receive.
  
  
  RESULTS
  First, performance was compared between the experiments on the two space stations by nonparametric testing. Performance differed significantly between space stations preflight, in flight, and postflight. Second, performance was analyzed by modeling the linear mixed effects of all variances (LME). The fixed factors space station, mission phases, training task numbers, and their interaction were analyzed. Cosmonauts were designated as a random factor. All fixed factors were found to be significant and the interaction between stations and mission phase was also significant.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In summary, performance on the ISS was shown to be significantly improved, thus enhancing mission safety. Additional approaches to docking performance assessment and prognosis are presented and discussed.
authors.affiliation: German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Johannes
authors.forename: Vyacheslav
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Salnitski
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dudukin
authors.forename: Lev
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shevchenko
authors.forename: Sergey
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bronnikov
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D018480:Astronauts; D005118:Extraterrestrial Environment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012426:Russia; D013026:Space Flight; D018531:Spacecraft; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis