Aside from physical challenges, psychological factors can also be tough, especially when doing missions alone. I am curious what kind of preparation Austronout does before taking up the mission in space.
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It’s very rare that an astronaut is entirely alone, much less for an extended period of time. In the space stations, there’s typically at least a few people in there, so it’s not like there’s nobody to talk to or interact with. Sending and keeping people in space is quite expensive as well, so they tend to keep the astronauts pretty busy doing stuff, it’s not like they have a huge amount of spare time to sit around being bored and think about how lonely they are.
That being said, the selection process for astronauts is very competitive and various mental evaluations are generally part of the process. One of the goals of that process is certainly to weed out individuals who are more likely to seriously struggle with the relevant psychological factors.
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