  Astronaut crews and ground control support teams are highly interdependent
teams that need to communicate effectively to achieve a safe mission - despite
being separated by large distances. Team communication quality with its facets
clarity of objectives and information flow is a key coordination process to
achieve high team performance and task satisfaction. Especially in
interdependent teams working in extreme environments with time-delayed
communications, the team's success depends on effective communication. We
hypothesized that communication quality affects two key team outcomes,
performance and task satisfaction, and that these effects can be explained by
increased workload (effort and frustration). Hypotheses were tested during the
AMADEE-20 analog Mars mission of the Austrian Space Forum. The analog
astronauts (AA) were supported by an On-Site-Support (OSS) team and a remote
Mission-Support-Centre (MSC) team. The MSC was the only contact for both AA and
OSS, and the communication between them had a one-way delay of 10 minutes. Our
study consisted of three runs in which members of each team had to exchange
information to solve an interdependent task. We measured communication quality,
effort and frustration, task satisfaction, and team performance. Results show
that clarity of objectives and information flow positively impacted multiteam
system performance. Furthermore, clarity of objectives reduced experienced
effort which in turn enhanced team performance. High levels of information flow
reduced experienced frustration, in turn enhancing task satisfaction. Our
findings show that these facets of communication quality are essential for
multiteam systems that work separated from each other. We stress that specific
(team) communication training for astronauts and support personnel will be key
to effective teamwork during future Mars missions, and thus to overall mission
success.
