Human health and performance risk management—an approach for exploration missions

During long duration exploration missions, maintaining human health and performance will be essential to enabling success. Therefore, NASA has developed standards through the Health and Medical Technical Authority to insure human health and performance during exploration. Human health standards are the first step in defining acceptable risk for human space flight and take into consideration both short-term (mission) and long-term (lifetime) health risk. These standards are based on the best medical evidence from terrestrial standards; analog spaceflight environments; and spaceflight experience. Standards drive the development of focused program requirements to mitigate risks associated with specific missions. Program requirements include vehicle design as well as health care systems including medical, environmental and countermeasures. NASA has also developed the risk mitigation analysis tool (RMAT), a process to evaluate the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies. The RMAT facilitates documentation and analysis of the effectiveness of mitigation strategies, enables NASA to baseline a risk mitigation approach based on the best evidence, and provides the traceability from research and technology development projects to specific mission deliverables.