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Professor Ana Cristina Costa of the University of Bradford. Picture: Mark Dobly A BRADFORD psychologist has been working with NASA on its long-held ambition to fly humans to Mars. Professor Ana Cristina Costa, a behavioural psychologist at the University of Bradford, worked for the US space agency at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. She developed a study for NASA’s Mars mission, looking at the effects of prolonged isolation and confinement - essentially how astronauts might react spending a long period away from Earth and an agonising 20-minute each-way delay in communications while on the Red Planet. Prof Costa said one of the challenges of the Mars mission is ensuring that the crew continues to function well once NASA is no longer able to maintain an instant dialogue with them. “If the journey from here to Mars takes six months and they stay on the planet another six months and it’s six months to get back, that’s 18 months. Using current technolo ....