NASA behavioral scientist details Artemis crew health work
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Dr. Suzanne Bell, an organizational psychologist, leads the Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
- Bell serves as principal investigator for Artemis crew health and readiness research, with her team finishing pre-mission data collection from the Artemis II crew about a month ago.
- Artemis II is the first crewed mission to travel beyond low-Earth orbit in 50 years and the first to fly in NASA's Orion spacecraft.
- Bell's team briefed the human research program on requirements ahead of Artemis III on a quick turnaround, while contributing data to plans for a sustained lunar presence and moon base design.
- Bell structures her day around parenting two teenage sons, leaving work at 5pm to prioritize gym sessions and indoor climbing with them and going to bed by 9-9:30pm.
Why it matters: With Artemis II generating the first behavioral health dataset from a crew traveling into deep space in half a century, Bell's lab holds data that will directly inform how NASA designs habitats, schedules, and support systems for a lunar base and eventual Mars missions.
