Astronaut Health and Performance
For over 50 years, Leidos has supported astronauts, spaceflight, and space science, evaluating countermeasures to human space flight risks, and identifying and investigating new risks. We help enable astronauts to be healthy and successful during space missions. We contribute to advancing astronaut health and capabilities in each of the areas listed below.
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What we do today
Preparing every crewed mission to the ISS
- Making sure they’re fit to go
- Coordinate all pre-flight biomedical data collection—22,000 hours of testing, nearly 100 ISS experiments (70 completed, 21 ongoing)
- Training them for the mission
- Provide certified training for Astronaut researchers
- Design and manage turnkey space flight analog facilities, as training environments for human subjects
- Keeping things running smoothly
- Bring professional, end-to-end project management discipline to keep biomedical Space Research Missions and experiments on track
Leidos crew training before and during space missions How we enable tomorrow
- As space missions move farther away
- Give astronauts the power of our sophisticated tools and capabilities—e.g., compute-at-the-edge, AI, autonomous technology—for critical decision-making with limited guidance from Earth.
- Moving the mission forward
- Augment research, improve laboratory management, advance engineering processes, deliver integration tools (1,100 PhDs working together)
- Making sure they’re fit to go
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Space craft radiation analysis What we do today
Guarding–Assessing–Informing–Mitigating Risks
- Guarding against exposure
- Operate the on call 24/7 radiation console for the ISS and for Artemis 1 Mission with NASA Flight Control Team
- Work with NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and GFSC Moon-to-Mars Office
- Assessing–Informing–Mitigating
- Provide radiation instruments, data analysis, and environmental characterization to assess, inform and mitigate crew risks associated with space radiation
- Monitored radiation activities for over 300 Space Extra-Vehicular; generated 1,200 Astronaut Radiation Dosimetry reports
Radiation console operations How we enable tomorrow
- Prepare for future missions (Gateway, Human Landing Systems, EVA Suits, Lunar Surface Mobility)
- Characterizing the radiation environment, developing concepts of operation and instrumentation
- Improving space weather forecast models (with academia)
- Assessing deep space radiation cancer risks (with Oakridge Center for Risk Analysis)
- Guarding against exposure
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Orion cockpit man/machine evaluation and analysis What we do today
Leidos human factors engineers and human system integration experts – including three Leidos Technical Fellows – work closely together
- Making it easier to perform tasks
- Develop human-machine interfaces that are easier to use in space
- Lighting the way
- Use an astronaut-centric design approach to spacecraft to help humans doing research on-orbit.
- With our Leidos Technical Fellows, tailor lighting systems to properly illuminate crew quarters for tasks and living
- Feeding the space crews
- Test, prepare, and package nutritious foods that actually taste good for the spaceflight environment
- Giving the crews the energy to be more productive and safer with more focus
Analog testing of lighting and crew procedures for future lunar missions How we enable tomorrow
- Making tasks more natural
- Evaluate human factors designs and recommend the best to spacecraft developers
- Help to optimize human performance
- Making it easier to perform tasks
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Leidos lead the development, integration, and installation of the ISS Treadmill 2 What we do today
- Keeping the crew healthy-Maintaining fitness
- Develop and assess medical standards, exercise devices, vehicle and spacesuit requirements , and countermeasures, using our biomedical expertise
- Develop and assess physiologic adaptation devices for ground-based studies
- Provide expert technical solutions, guidance, and support
- Help with weightless physical fitness, operation of medical and research equipment, study-unique hardware/software, and training protocols
The Total Organic Carbon analyzer measures air and water quality on board the ISS How we enable tomorrow
- Use our immediately accessible research analog (our Navy sailor health research) for low-risk insights into human factors and countermeasure inspiration
- Design simple, effective exercise machines—essential for long-duration, deep-space missions, where replacement parts are few and crew performs all maintenance
- Keeping the crew healthy-Maintaining fitness
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Human Research Facility onboard the ISS What we do today
Providing knowledge and insight, from defining requirements, to integrating spaceflight systems, to delivering the data
- Keeping experiments running
- Support on-orbit research, on console, through the JSC Telescience Support Center
- Supported 20,000 hours of on-orbit research on the ISS—73 ISS biomedical experiments; 89 Principal Investigators
- Finding the subjects—Recruiting participants for research and NASA studies
- 24/7 support—Providing on-mission support through a 24/7 Mission Control Center for NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog
NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) How we enable tomorrow
- Knowing what’s ahead
- Use virtual reality for training, remote support, and simulation—easily adaptable for deep space support
- Watching over their health
- Building earth-analogs for submariners to study wellness, psychological factors, and undersea warfighter health and performance, working with the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory
- Seeing the details
- Provide unique insight into astronaut-centric and analogous environments, using our sensor technology
- Autonomous operations and submarine design (through our Maritime group and Gibbs & Cox subsidiary)
- Keeping experiments running
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FNLCR Campus in Frederick, Maryland What we do today
Illuminating cancer and other health risks
- Investigating and experimenting
- Implemented 73 space-centered biomedical investigations
- Support 21 ongoing investigations to address risks to human spaceflight
- Analyzing the information
- Delivered the Information Management Platform for Data Analytics and Aggregation (IMPALA) for the NASA Human Health and Performance Directorate
- Linking the studies to find a cure
- Support researchers from the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) and leverage the ISS National Lab
- Crystalize a protein linking to several of the deadliest cancers, including pancreatic, lung, and colon cancers
NASA Twins Study comparing space vs ground base research results on identical twins with a focus on genomic changes How we enable tomorrow
- Reinventing diagnostics
- Developed technology to represent organs digitally (digital twining) with a team of over 1,000 researchers at FNLCR
- Leverage for future spaceflight diagnostics
- Developed technology to represent organs digitally (digital twining) with a team of over 1,000 researchers at FNLCR
- Addressing health in remote environments
- Provide access to over 12,000 medical partners nation-wide to support astronaut health examinations and diagnostic testing with our mobile clinics (through our QTC subsidiary)
- Provide accurate health records and liberate clinician time and money through our electronic health record system (DoD GENESIS)
- Investigating and experimenting
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FNLCR Campus in Frederick Maryland What we do today
Manage laboratories and facilities through our NASA JSC HHPC team
- Feeding the crew—Research, develop, and provide food on the ISS and future deep Space Missions (NASA Space Food Research Laboratory)
- Training—Train the crew for biomedical space flight research in an ISS mockup facility (NASA Human Research Program Payload Development Laboratory)
- Lowering radiation risk—Develop and produce radiation monitoring devices (NASA Space Radiation Hardware Laboratory)
- Sound Engineering—Study spaceflight hardware acoustics (NASA Acoustics Laboratory)
- Collecting samples—Provide space hardware and kits to collect blood, urine, and fecal samples in space and Earthside data analysis (Metabolic Laboratory)
NHRL Campus, San Diego How we enable tomorrow
- Supporting drug discovery and development—Produce pharmaceuticals for first-in-human clinical trials
- Protecting the astronaut—building and deploying a Personal Protection Biosystem that lets pathogens out of a protective suit, and preventing them from coming in
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Astronaut Christina Koch places blood samples into MELFI freezer for future return to Earth for analysis What we do today
Monitoring and learning
- Recovering, handling, and distributing 5,000 samples for the 70 ISS biomedical experiments.
- Checking it twice—After validating integrity of experiments and data, transfer all materials to the PIs for post-flight analytics
- Sharing the data—Disseminate shared-research data to ISS biomedical researchers and select data to send to NASA Flight Surgeons
Astronauts return from space and begin post-flight biomedical baseline data collection the same day How we enable tomorrow
- Learning from the past
- Maintain a library of lessons learned from every mission for reference for future missions and experiments when designing
- Informing the future
- Conduct research (human subject and data-driven) to inform decision making and improve the health, performance, and readiness of our nation’s warfighters
- Easily extend research to benefit the astronaut
- Leveraging our experts to advance human health and performance
- Leidos’ team of 400 research personnel—epidemiologists, statisticians, psychologists, physiologists, neuroscientists, biomechanics, clinical researchers, and engineers
