Estimating medical risk in human spaceflight.
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2022-03-31
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Abstract
NASA and commercial spaceflight companies will soon be retuning humans to the Moon and then eventually sending them on to Mars. These distant planetary destinations will pose new risks-in particular for the health of the astronaut crews. The bulk of the evidence characterizing human health and performance in spaceflight has come from missions in Low Earth Orbit. As missions last longer and travel farther from Earth, medical risk is expected to contribute an increasing proportion of total mission risk. To date, there have been no reliable estimates of how much. The Integrated Medical Model (IMM) is a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) Monte-Carlo simulation tool developed by NASA for medical risk assessment. This paper uses the IMM to provide an evidence-based, quantified medical risk estimate comparison across different spaceflight mission durations. We discuss model limitations and unimplemented capabilities providing insight into the complexity of medical risk estimation for human spaceflight. The results enable prioritization of medical needs in the context of other mission risks. These findings provide a reasonable bounding estimate for medical risk in missions to the Moon and Mars and hold value for risk managers and mission planners in performing cost-benefit trades for mission capability and research investments.
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Antonsen, Erik L, Jerry G Myers, Lynn Boley, John Arellano, Eric Kerstman, Binaifer Kadwa, Daniel M Buckland, Mary Van Baalen, et al. (2022). Estimating medical risk in human spaceflight. NPJ microgravity, 8(1). p. 8. 10.1038/s41526-022-00193-9 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25506.
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Daniel Buckland
Dr. Buckland is an Attending Physician at Duke University Hospital Emergency Department. He is the Director of the Duke Acute Care Technology Lab where he leads research in developing technology for the diagnosis and treatment of acute disease in data science and robotics projects by managing collaborative research projects between clinicians and engineers. His work at involves studying how advancements in autonomy impact safety critical systems, including the healthcare system. As part of his focus on autonomy, he is the Medical Director of the the Laboratory for Transformational Administration (LTA) an Operational Data Science group in the Duke Department of Surgery.
In addition, Dr. Buckland is the Deputy Chair of the Human System Risk Board of the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer via an Intergovernmental Personnel Act agreement with NASA, where he determines the human system risk of spaceflight and how standards, countermeasures, and mission design can mitigate risk.
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