On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space when he piloted the Mercury capsule Freedom 7. His sub-orbital journey lasted 15 minutes. Like most children who grew up in the early era of space flight, I remember this moment well.
The flight was extra special for me because my dad, Arthur L. Levine, worked for NASA. As a human resources administrator, he recruited John Glenn, who in 1962 became the first American to orbit Earth. My dad, Glenn and Neil Armstrong, all worked at the research center in Cleveland, Ohio, which today is called the Glenn Research Center.
Because dad worked for the agency, I became fascinated as a child with astronauts and space flight. That fascination has stayed with me as an adult.
And over and over I keep returning to something: What impact does being in space have on the human psyche? And for those future Mars astronauts, how would the human mind hold up as Mother Earth fades away to a dot?
Surprisingly, it wasn’t until Mars missions became feasible that NASA considered the full breadth of the psychological needs of astronauts.
