Detect harmful radiation, pilot a rover module, learn better sleep and body maintenance: astronauts aboard the International Space Station are preparing for future missions even further afield—from the Moon to, one day, Mars.

The latest arrival of four more astronauts to the ISS, due to blast off aboard a SpaceX rocket from Florida on Thursday, will open the door for new experiments aimed at priming humans for long-distance space travel.

"We're trying out technologies for exploration," said Remi Canton, director of Cadmos, the division of France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) undertaking 12 new experiments.

Whether it is humans revisiting the Moon for the first time since 1972 or eventually travelling as far as the Red Planet, the challenges are overwhelming.

Firstly, how can engineers ensure that astronauts and their equipment are protected from the flow of particles thrown out by solar storms and cosmic rays?

Astronauts who spend extended time in space face stressors such as isolation, confinement, lack of privacy, altered light-dark cycles, monotony and separation from family. Interestingly, so do people who work at international research stations in Antarctica, where the extreme environment is characterized by numerous stressors that mirror those present during long-duration space exploration.

To better understand the psychological hurdles faced by astronauts, University of Houston professor of psychology Candice Alfano and her team developed the Mental Health Checklist (MHCL), a self-reporting instrument for detecting mental health changes in isolated, confined, extreme (ICE) environments. The team used the MHCL to study psychological changes at two Antarctic stations. The findings are published in Acta Astronautica.

"We observed significant changes in psychological functioning, but patterns of change for specific aspects of mental health differed. The most marked alterations were observed for positive emotions such that we saw continuous declines from the start to the end of the mission, without evidence of a 'bounce-back effect' as participants were preparing to return home," reports Alfano.

The launch of Sputnik, humankind's first satellite, in 1957 marked the dawn of a new era for the people of Earth.

Decades later, our planet is now surrounded by spacecraft carrying out extraordinary work to study our changing climate, save lives following disasters, deliver global communication and navigation services and help us answer important scientific questions.

But these satellites are at risk. Accidental collisions between objects in space can produce huge clouds of fast-moving debris. These clouds can spread and damage additional satellites with cascading effect, eventually making the most useful orbits around Earth no longer safe for spacecraft or people.

Satellites today have to carry out collision avoidance maneuvers to avoid possible impact with debris. These are costly, and hundreds of collision avoidance alerts are already issued every week.

And this is nothing compared to what is coming. Several companies have begun to launch mega-constellations into low-Earth orbit to provide global internet access. They have great benefits, but could be a source of huge disruption if we do not change our behavior.

Our current methods for avoiding collisions in space will become inadequate in just a few years—and even compliance with space debris mitigation guidelines may no longer be enough.

Imagine that you are flying a model helicopter or a drone. You are there with the auto controls. You switch them on. The rotors start to turn, gradually increasing their spin. You watch, then push the control for lift. Your helicopter rises, hovers, then at the next command moves forward. Oops, it didn't go high enough. You quickly move the joystick and the drone rises to fly above the obstruction. Finally it's in the air, moving at speed above sand dunes, hills and valleys—sending back pictures as the landscape unfolds.

Now imagine that you are flying your drone on a planet 180 million kilometers away. It takes 20 minutes for your command to reach the planet—and the pictures you see of what is happening are 20 minutes old. You cannot take evasive or corrective action if anything goes wrong. If it went wrong, it would be too late. This is the type of situation that Nasa's engineers did not wish to experience on the maiden flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on April 19.