AI Healthcare Assistant Developed for Astronauts Heading to Mars

Metaverse Planet August 11, 2025Last Updated: November 3, 2025

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NASA and Google are developing an AI-powered medical assistant to meet the healthcare needs of astronauts on Mars and Moon missions. The system will provide diagnostic and treatment support in space without the presence of a doctor.

As crewed space missions extend and move farther away from Earth, NASA is accelerating the development of solutions to meet the health needs of astronauts without relying on Earth. In this context, the agency is working with Google on an AI-based medical assistant called the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA).

Astronauts on the International Space Station can currently communicate with mission control in real-time, receive regular medical resupplies, and return to Earth after six months. However, as NASA and its commercial partners—including Elon Musk’s SpaceX—plan longer-duration missions to destinations like the Moon and Mars, these capabilities will no longer be available. This makes Earth-independent healthcare services critical.

Healthcare in Space is Entrusted to AI

Operating on the Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, the CMO-DA can process multiple data types, including speech, text, and images. The system is being developed under a fixed-price subscription agreement with the Google Public Sector unit, which covers the costs of cloud services, application development infrastructure, and model training. NASA owns the application’s source code and is fine-tuning the models to be suitable for the space environment.

The CMO-DA has been tested in three scenarios so far: an ankle injury, flank pain, and ear pain. Three doctors, including an astronaut, evaluated the system’s performance. The diagnostic accuracy was measured at 74% for flank pain, 80% for ear pain, and 88% for ankle injury.

NASA is proceeding with the project’s roadmap step by step. Plans include collecting data from medical devices and giving the model “situational awareness” of space-specific health conditions like microgravity. On the Google side, it’s not yet clear whether they will pursue regulatory approval for such a system to be used in doctors’ offices on Earth. However, if the project successfully completes its validation phase, this could be a potential next step.