Giffords' Astronaut Husband Can Handle Space Mission, Experts Say

For an ordinary person, it might be impossible to put in a long, hard day at the office while a beloved family member lies badly injured in a hospital bed.

But astronaut Mark Kelly is no ordinary person. And the evidence shows that Kelly may very well be right in thinking he can successfully command a space shuttle mission in April even as his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, recovers from being shot through the brain as she chatted with constituents in Arizona.

In studies of aviators, who have a similarly dangerous and demanding profession, "there are many examples of people dealing with high levels of life stress who are still able to cope effectively and perform the job well," Jason Kring, an expert in human behavior in spaceflight at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AOL News.

"I have no serious concerns" about Kelly's ability to complete his mission, said Lawrence Palinkas of the University of Southern California, who has studied polar explorers and others engaged in extreme endeavors. "As far as ... the extent to which his wife's health and recovery will affect [his mission], given the nature of his support system, I'm less concerned that will create any serious obstacles."

NASA announced today that Kelly would continue as commander of the shuttle Endeavour, now scheduled to blast off April 19 on a complex mission to deliver a multimillion-dollar astrophysics experiment to the International Space Station. Kelly's role on the mission had been in doubt since his wife's shooting on Jan. 8, prompting NASA to appoint a backup commander to train in Kelly's place.

Kelly decided that given his wife's rapid progress, he wanted to rejoin his five crew mates, whom he has led through nearly 18 months of training. Kelly's high-profile flight will be the second-to-last shuttle mission and almost certainly Kelly's last visit to space.

Kelly, who like many astronauts was a military test pilot before joining NASA, said at a news conference today that he was confident he could set aside worries about his wife's condition during his training and flight.

Compartmentalization "is something you learn very early when you start flying airplanes," he said. Aviators can "ignore stuff that's going on in your personal life and focus just on the mission."

Astronauts have demonstrated repeatedly that the "Right Stuff" branding is not just Hollywood myth. Spaceflight pioneer Gordon Cooper was so calm before his first liftoff he fell asleep on the launchpad while strapped into the tiny Mercury space capsule.

More recently, astronaut Daniel Tani was living on the space station, with no way to get back to Earth quickly, when his mother died in a car crash in 2007. He declined his bosses' offer to cut his workload and continued to work productively for the rest of his stay in orbit. And astronaut Lisa Nowak performed well on her 2006 shuttle flight despite serious marital trouble -- later revealed to the world when she was arrested in 2007 for accosting her rival for the affections of another astronaut.

That's not to say that astronauts and others chosen for high-stress positions are impervious to personal crises. Astronaut Jeffrey Ashby, for example, had to drop out of training for a shuttle mission in the 1990s after his wife became seriously ill, said amateur space historian Robert Pearlman, founder and editor of website collectSPACE.com. And Duane Graveline, who joined the astronaut corps in the 1960s, never got named to a space mission, Pearlman said, because of his "very public divorce. ... He was not fired, but he was basically told to consider leaving, and he did."

Palinkas said his studies of polar explorers and other research show that emotional compartmentalization is extremely difficult. He recalled one highly competent and accomplished staffer at an Antarctic research station who had to be evacuated after getting word that his son had attempted suicide. Palinkas and David Musson of Canada's McMaster University, who has also studied aerospace behavioral factors, agreed that there's no evidence that astronauts have better-than-average compartmentalization skills.

Former shuttle astronaut Thomas Jones said the mission will probably go smoothly, but "it would go better -- if something goes wrong -- if Mark and NASA had gone with a substitute. He's very skilled, but I believe a complete focus on the mission is necessary for meeting all flight eventualities successfully." Jones added, though, that he doesn't know as much as do the NASA officials who made the decision.

But Kelly will be helped by the excellent support system provided by NASA, from flight doctors who will monitor his well-being to fellow astronauts assigned to help with family duties during the grueling training that precedes a mission.

It also helps that Kelly will be on a shuttle flight, unlike his twin brother, Scott Kelly, who's now the commander of the space station. Shuttle flights, at only two weeks long, are highly regimented and planned down to the last minute. Station flights last six months and are more free-form.

Mark Kelly "is going to have a very tight schedule to adhere to" that will give him less "downtime when he might think about his wife's condition," Embry-Riddle's Kring said. All the same, "to say that he won't have any problems is probably not accurate. He's a human. He's not a robot."

Kelly himself acknowledged doubts about his own ability to stay completely focused. Keeping his thoughts off his personal business "might be a little bit more challenging this time," he said today.

But he drew confidence from the training he did this week, especially a four-hour session practicing launches with his crew in a shuttle simulator. During such practice runs, the astronauts are pelted with make-believe malfunctions, but Kelly said he did "not make any mistakes. [That] told me that in this situation I am able to do that compartmentalization that I've been practicing for 24 years."