In partnership with Google, NASA is testing a new medical assistance system boosted at AI to take care of its astronauts during long -term missions. An initiative that could raise a major obstacle to very ambitious exploration missions.
Health is an absolute priority for space agencies, which make every effort to ensure that astronauts will in no case be helpless in the face of a medical emergency. They all receive basic medical training, and aboard the ISS, there is always at least one member of the crew assigned to the post of medical officer – an astronaut specifically trained in the basics of medicine and emergency surgery.
A time problem
It is an essential precaution, because even in the case of the ISS, which is relatively close to us, it is generally impossible to quickly repatriate an wounded astronaut to treat it on earth within an acceptable time. The return of a capsule to the surface requires several hours of preparation under optimal conditions, and it is a delay which can be too long if the situation is critical. Not to mention the fact that a seriously injured astronaut will have a lot of trouble enduring the start of the atmospheric school year, which puts the organism to the test.
In the event of a vital emergency, ISS staff can contact the database to receive help. A team of professional doctors can, for example, guide an astronaut from Earth so that he can carry out a surgical operation, especially in the event that the on-board doctor himself is injured.
Unfortunately, this will not be possible for future exploration missions because of a crucial limit: the latency of communications. The latter increases with distance and quickly becomes too important to allow to communicate in real time with a land doctor.
Take the example of a Martian mission: send a message to earth, then receive the answer request a minimum of six minutes. And this figure is only valid when the two planets are closer to each other. When located at the opposite points of their respective orbits, the same operation can take more than forty minutes – a potentially fatal delay in a vital emergencyfor example if a major artery is affected.
A medical assistant boosted at AI
Therefore, it is important to find solutions so that the crew can always have access to immediately available medical resources. And it is for this reason that NASA is now working with Google to test a new medical assistant doped at AI. This tool, called CMO-DA (for Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistantor digital assistant of the medical officer in French), aims to help staff take care of all kinds of health problems.
Ideally, this system will help crews to diagnose and deal with possible health problems without depending on communications with Earth.
“” Trained on the literature relating to space flights, the AI system uses cutting -edge machine learning techniques to securely provide real -time analysis of health and crew performance Said Google’s representatives in a statement published on August 8.
Preliminary tests have apparently been rather encouraging. According to the press release, the results suggest that the system is actually capable of establishing reliable diagnostics from reported symptoms. NASA and Google will now refine this model to improve its performance and allow it to provide increasingly detailed indications on the procedure to follow in each case.
A technology still imperfect, but promising
It will therefore be interesting to follow the evolution of this tool, because so far, the generalist diagnostic tools based on AI are still far from perfect. They work relatively well in well -defined cases, but their performance drops quickly when it comes to making a nuanced diagnosis, especially in the rarest and complex cases. In addition, like all AI models, they can be subject to hallucinations – these aberrant, even factually erroneous responses, which, in the field of medicine, can have catastrophic consequences.
Despite these limits, the concept remains promising. Because once mature, a system of this kind could bring a very appreciable serenity of serenity to astronauts, or even contribute directly to save the lives of heroes who will explore the confines of the solar system.