Space Itineraries Scientific, psychological and cultural aspects of human missions in extra-terrestrial Space[Itinéraires spatiaux Aspects scientifiques, psychologiques et culturels des missions humaines dans l'espace extraterrestre]

The following article provides a general overview of the current technological, psychological, and cultural aspects of manned extra-terrestrial space missions. Since the beginning of space exploration, crew selections have mainly been performed on military professionals to cover mission targets for limited amounts of time. Now, Space Agencies (e.g., ESA) are currently evaluating a new generation of capable astronauts, expanding the pool of potential candidates with no military background by involving heterogeneous fields of knowledge. Within this context, extra-terrestrial manned missions have been proven to be one of the best methods to perform cutting-edge technology experiments, since they offer an unbiased and unique environment whose conditions are hardly reproducible on Earth. Also, it should be noted that one of the most challenging space-related risks is represented by the astronauts' safety in a radiation-exposed environment as well as the long-term exposure to micro-g conditions that can affect their psycho-physical health. Structural and health damages could be persistent, even after the supposed successful outcome of the mission. For this reason, it is compulsory to design both the physical and social settings accurately. In addition, analysts are bounded to predict almost every aspect of space missions, to anticipate undesired events such as basic instinct reactions to Space-like environments, performances decline, and psychological changes.