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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2001

Satellites as Sentinels for Health

Remotely-sensed data and observations are providing powerful new tools for addressing the human health aspects of sustainability by enabling improved understanding of the relationships and linkages between health-related environmental parameters and society as well as techniques for early warning of potential health problems. Remote sensing, geographic information systems, improved computational capabilities, and interdisciplinary research between the Earth and health science communities are being combined in rich collaborative efforts resulting in more rapid problem-solving, early warning, and prevention in global health issues. This paper provides a number of recent examples of applications of these technologies to health issues related to the following: infectious and vector-borne diseases; urban, regional and global air pollution; heat stress; UV radiation; water-borne disease; extreme weather; contaminant pathways (ocean, atmosphere, ice).

Maynard, Nancy G.↗
NASA NTRS2007

The Application of NASA Technology to Public Health

NASA scientists have a history of applying technologies created to handle satellite data to human health at various spatial scales. Scientists are now engaged in multiple public health application projects that integrate NASA satellite data with measures of public health. Such integration requires overcoming disparities between the environmental and the health data. Ground based sensors, satellite imagery, model outputs and other environmental sources have inconsistent spatial and temporal distributions. The MSFC team has recognized the approach used by environmental scientists to fill in the empty places can also be applied to outcomes, exposures and similar data. A revisit to the classic epidemiology study of 1854 using modern day surface modeling and GIS technology, demonstrates how spatial technology can enhance and change the future of environmental epidemiology. Thus, NASA brings to public health, not just a set of data, but an innovative way of thinking about the data.

Rickman, Douglas L.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Human Research Program Opportunities

The goal of HRP is to provide human health and performance countermeasures, knowledge, technologies, and tools to enable safe, reliable, and productive human space exploration. The Human Research Program was designed to meet the needs of human space exploration, and understand and reduce the risk to crew health and performance in exploration missions.

Kundrot, Craig E.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Estimation Methodology to Evaluate Hypothetical Downwind Impacts from Fusion Plants

The continuing move toward establishing fusion systems for power generation and the associated research to that end is prompting examination of the potential health and safety impacts of such plants to the environment and human health. As many fusion facilities will have tritium inventories on site as part of the fusion fuel, evaluating the potential for downwind impacts from fusion facilities or power plants resulting from accident or routine emissions is a general requirement for assessing location and impacts to workers and the public. As part of siting considerations and permitting, the fusion facilities would be evaluated for potential for downwind concentration and dose impacts. For accident assessment scenarios, the downwind impacts are usually modeled as an instantaneous (or near-instantaneous) release of material transported following the wind. A range of meteorological conditions are usually assessed to determine a bounding case which results in a dose exceeding a specified threshold (e.g., 95 th or 99 th percentile; DOE 2015). This report provides initial estimates of the downwind dose impacts from a potential tritium release at a fusion power plant-relevant facility and identifies potential distances required to limit impacts to nearby population. This effort is meant to provide a bounding analysis and theoretical understanding of impacts of tritium releases for facilities subject to various environmental and atmospheric conditions. Using a Gaussian dispersion model to simulate a brief plume, downwind concentration and dose is projected for tritium oxide. Releases are assumed to consist entirely of tritium oxide due to the increased dose impacts from the oxide form relative to the elemental form of tritium. We also briefly identify how climatological conditions could potentially be used to support risk profile determination.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2007

Use of AIRS, OMI, MLS, and TES Data in Assessing Forest Ecosystem Exposure to Ozone

Ground-level ozone at high levels poses health threats to exposed flora and fauna, including negative impacts to human health. While concern is common regarding depletion of ozone in the stratosphere, portions of the urban and rural United States periodically have high ambient levels of tropospheric ozone on the ground. Ozone pollution can cause a variety of impacts to susceptible vegetation (e.g., Ponderosa and Jeffrey pine species in the southwestern United States), such as stunted growth, alteration of growth form, needle or leaf chlorosis, and impaired ability to withstand drought-induced water stress. In addition, Southern Californian forests with high ozone exposures have been recently subject to multiyear droughts that have led to extensive forest overstory mortality from insect outbreaks and increased incidence of wildfires. Residual forests in these impacted areas may be more vulnerable to high ozone exposures and to other forest threats than ever before. NASA sensors collect a wealth of atmospheric data that have been used recently for mapping and monitoring regional tropospheric ozone levels. AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder), OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument), MLS (Microwave Limb Sounder), and TES (Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer) data could be used to assess forest ecosystem exposure to ozone. Such NASA data hold promise for providing better or at least complementary synoptic information on ground-level ozone levels that Federal agency partners can use to assess forest health trends and to mitigate the threats as needed in compliance with Federal laws and mandates. NASA data products on ozone concentrations may be able to aid applications of DSTs (decision support tools) adopted by the USDA FS (U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service) and by the NPS (National Park Service), such as the Ozone Calculator, in which ground ozone estimates are employed to assess ozone impacts to forested vegetation.

Spruce, Joseph P.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Lightning NOx Estimates from Space-Based Lightning Imagers

The intense heating of air by a lightning channel, and subsequent rapid cooling, leads to the production of lightning nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) as discussed in Chameides [1979]. In turn, the lightning nitrogen oxides (or "LNOx" for brevity) indirectly influences the Earth's climate because the LNOx molecules are important in controlling the concentration of ozone (O3) and hydroxyl radicals (OH) in the atmosphere. Climate is most sensitive to O3 in the upper troposphere, and LNOx is the most important source of NOx in the upper troposphere at tropical and subtropical latitudes; hence, lightning is a useful parameter to monitor for climate assessments. The National Climate Assessment (NCA) program was created in response to the Congressionally-mandated Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990. Thirteen US government organizations participate in the NCA program which examines the effects of global change on the natural environment, human health and welfare, energy production and use, land and water resources, human social systems, transportation, agriculture, and biological diversity. The NCA focuses on natural and human-induced trends in global change, and projects major trends 25 to 100 years out. In support of the NCA, the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) continues to assess lightning-climate inter-relationships. This activity applies a variety of NASA assets to monitor in detail the changes in both the characteristics of ground- and space- based lightning observations as they pertain to changes in climate. In particular, changes in lightning characteristics over the conterminous US (CONUS) continue to be examined by this author using data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Lightning Imaging Sensor. In this study, preliminary estimates of LNOx trends derived from TRMM/LIS lightning optical energy observations in the 17 yr period 1998-2014 are provided. This represents an important first step in testing the ability to make remote retrievals of LNOx from a satellite-based lightning sensor. As is shown, the methodology can also be directly applied to more recently launched lightning mappers, such as the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, and the International Space Station LIS.

Koshak, William J.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Future Exploration Missions' Tasks Associated with the Risk of Inadequate Design of Human and Automation/Robotic Integration

NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) funds research efforts aimed at mitigating various human health and performance risks, including the Risk of Inadequate Design of Human and Automation/Robotic Integration (HARI). As such, within HRP, the Human Factors and Behavioral Performance (HFBP) Element tasked an evaluation of future HARI needs in order to scope and focus the HARI risk research plan. The objective was to provide a systematic understanding of the critical factors associated with effective HARI that will be necessary to achieve the future mission goals for near- and deep-space exploration. Future mission goals are specified by NASA Design Reference Missions (DRMs) that are pertinent to the HRP. The outcome of this evaluation is a set of NASA-relevant HARI tasks, factors, and interactions required for exploration-class missions.

space operations↗
NASA NTRS2015

NASA Earth Observation Systems and Applications for Health and Air Quality

There is a growing body of evidence that the environment can affect human health in ways that are both complex and global in scope. To address some of these complexities, NASA maintains a diverse constellation of Earth observing research satellites, and sponsors research in developing satellite data applications across a wide spectrum of areas. These include environmental health; infectious disease; air quality standards, policies, and regulations; and the impact of climate change on health and air quality in a number of interrelated efforts. The Health and Air Quality Applications fosters the use of observations, modeling systems, forecast development, application integration, and the research to operations transition process to address environmental health effects. NASA has been a primary partner with Federal operational agencies over the past nine years in these areas. This talk presents the background of the Health and Air Quality Applications program, recent accomplishments, and a plan for the future.

Omar, Ali H.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Impact of the ISS Environment on CNS in Drosophila Melanogaster

Altered gravity and elevated carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) levels as experienced on the ISS can adversely affect human health across various organ systems, especially the Central Nervous System (CNS). Investigating these changes is essential for understanding the long-term effects of spaceflight on human physiology to ensure crew health. Ground-based analogs provide an efficient method to evaluate alterations induced by chronic spaceflight on a larger scale. This study focuses on CNS changes in response to hypergravity (HG) and elevated CO 2 levels via a ground-based analog using the well-established model organism, Drosophila melanogaster. We hypothesize behavior and physiological changes immediately post exposure to HG+CO 2 , along with chronic effects up to 25 days post-exposure. Adult male and female flies were exposed to varying gravity loads (1g, 1.2g, and 3g) and elevated CO 2 levels (~4000 ppm, mimicking CO 2 levels on the ISS) for 15 days and were assessed immediately and at 5-, 10-, and 25-days post-exposure, mirroring astronauts’ post-return profiling. The flies were assessed for neurobehavioral changes, including longevity and negative geotaxis; brain morphological changes, such as dopaminergic neuron count, apoptosis, and glial cell density; and bioenergetic changes in the brain, including mitochondrial abundance and membrane potential. Longevity remained unchanged under hypergravity, even with the addition of elevated CO 2 as a stressor. However, despite the stable lifespan, quality of life appeared to be affected, as shown by negative geotaxis and neuroanatomical changes. Negative geotaxis testing revealed a reduction in motor ability at R0 across all conditions, which correlated with a decrease in dopaminergic (DA) neuron count. Additional observations suggested further systemic alterations, including a decrease in glial cell count, an increase in apoptosis, and notable bioenergetic changes. Collectively, these findings contribute to our understanding of the long-term effects of spaceflight on the CNS.

spaceflight↗
NASA NTRS2011

Integration and Cooperation in the Next Golden Age of Human Space Flight Data Repositories: Tools for Retrospective Analysis and Future Planning

As NASA transitions from the Space Shuttle era into the next phase of space exploration, the need to ensure the capture, analysis, and application of its research and medical data is of greater urgency than at any other previous time. In this era of limited resources and challenging schedules, the Human Research Program (HRP) based at NASA s Johnson Space Center (JSC) recognizes the need to extract the greatest possible amount of information from the data already captured, as well as focus current and future research funding on addressing the HRP goal to provide human health and performance countermeasures, knowledge, technologies, and tools to enable safe, reliable, and productive human space exploration. To this end, the Science Management Office and the Medical Informatics and Health Care Systems Branch within the HRP and the Space Medicine Division have been working to make both research data and clinical data more accessible to the user community. The Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA), the research repository housing data and information regarding the physiologic effects of microgravity, and the Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health Repository (LSAH-R), the clinical repository housing astronaut data, have joined forces to achieve this goal. The task of both repositories is to acquire, preserve, and distribute data and information both within the NASA community and to the science community at large. This is accomplished via the LSDA s public website (http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov), which allows access to experiment descriptions including hardware, datasets, key personnel, mission descriptions and a mechanism for researchers to request additional data, research and clinical, that is not accessible from the public website. This will result in making the work of NASA and its partners available to the wider sciences community, both domestic and international. The desired outcome is the use of these data for knowledge discovery, retrospective analysis, and planning of future research studies.

Thomas, D.↗
NASA NTRS2011

NASA Life Sciences Data Repositories: Tools for Retrospective Analysis and Future Planning

As NASA transitions from the Space Shuttle era into the next phase of space exploration, the need to ensure the capture, analysis, and application of its research and medical data is of greater urgency than at any other previous time. In this era of limited resources and challenging schedules, the Human Research Program (HRP) based at NASA s Johnson Space Center (JSC) recognizes the need to extract the greatest possible amount of information from the data already captured, as well as focus current and future research funding on addressing the HRP goal to provide human health and performance countermeasures, knowledge, technologies, and tools to enable safe, reliable, and productive human space exploration. To this end, the Science Management Office and the Medical Informatics and Health Care Systems Branch within the HRP and the Space Medicine Division have been working to make both research data and clinical data more accessible to the user community. The Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA), the research repository housing data and information regarding the physiologic effects of microgravity, and the Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health (LSAH-R), the clinical repository housing astronaut data, have joined forces to achieve this goal. The task of both repositories is to acquire, preserve, and distribute data and information both within the NASA community and to the science community at large. This is accomplished via the LSDA s public website (http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov), which allows access to experiment descriptions including hardware, datasets, key personnel, mission descriptions and a mechanism for researchers to request additional data, research and clinical, that is not accessible from the public website. This will result in making the work of NASA and its partners available to the wider sciences community, both domestic and international. The desired outcome is the use of these data for knowledge discovery, retrospective analysis, and planning of future research studies.

Thomas, D.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Progress and Challenges in Quantifying Wildfire Smoke Emissions, Their Properties, Transport, and Atmospheric Impacts

Wildfire is a natural and integral ecosystem process that is necessary to maintain species composition, structure, and ecosystem function. Extreme fires have been increasing over the last decades, which have a substantial impact on air quality, human health, the environment, and climate systems. Smoke aerosols can be transported over large distances, acting as pollutants that affect adjacent and distant downwind communities and environments. Fire emissions are a complicated mixture of trace gases and aerosols, many of which are short‐lived and chemically reactive, and this mixture affects atmospheric composition in complex ways that are not completely understood. We present a review of the current state of knowledge of smoke aerosol emissions originating from wildfires. Satellite observations, from both passive and active instruments, are critical to providing the ability to view the large‐scale influence of fire, smoke, and their impacts. Progress in the development of fire emission estimates to regional and global chemical transport models has advanced, although significant challenges remain, such as connecting ecosystems and fuels burned with dependent atmospheric chemistry. Knowledge of the impact of smoke on radiation, clouds, and precipitation has progressed and is an essential topical research area. However, current measurements and parameterizations are not adequate to describe the impacts on clouds of smoke particles (e.g., CNN, INP) from fire emissions in the range of representative environmental conditions necessary to advance science or modeling. We conclude by providing recommendations to the community that we believe will advance the science and understanding of the impact of fire smoke emissions on human and environmental health, as well as feedback with climate system.

I N Sokolik↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Health and Air Quality Applications

There is a growing body of evidence that the environment can affect human health in ways that are both complex and global in scope. To address some of these complexities, NASA maintains a diverse constellation of Earth observing research satellites, and sponsors research in developing satellite data applications across a wide spectrum of areas. These include environmental health; infectious disease; air quality standards, policies, and regulations; and the impact of climate change on health and air quality in a number of interrelated efforts. The Health and Air Quality Applications fosters the use of observations, modeling systems, forecast development, application integration, and the research to operations transition process to address environmental health effects. NASA has been a primary partner with Federal operational agencies over the past nine years in these areas. This talk presents the background of the Health and Air Quality Applications program, recent accomplishments, and a plan for the future.

Air Quality Remote Sensing↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Long-Term Health Risk Quantification

Astronauts face hazards during spaceflight, including space radiation exposure, isolation and confinement, traveling far distances from Earth, reduced gravity levels, and closed and hostile environments. These hazards drive the definition of human health and performance risks associated with spaceflight. NASA’s Human System Risk Board maintains the human spaceflight risk posture for in-mission risks, as well as post-flight, Long-Term Health (LTH)risks potentially occurring later in the astronaut’s life. LTH risk encompasses the timeframe from immediately post-flight, through the rest of an astronaut’s career, through retirement, and until death. Possible LTH risk outcomes include the time and interventions needed for the astronaut to return to preflight physiological states after experiencing spaceflight hazards and recovery from any in-mission medical events that persist into the post-flight timeframe. It includes chronic complications that may arise due to experiencing in-flight medical conditions or injuries and medical conditions that occur later in life with a higher probability of occurrence or with more severity because of their spaceflight exposure. Finally, LTH risk outcomes can also include a reduction in life expectancy due to spaceflight exposures. There have been 144 medical conditions identified by NASA’s Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health team to be associated with LTH risk. Epidemiological studies have been performed for some of these conditions to determine if astronauts suffer from an increased prevalence or severity of the condition due to their spaceflight experience compared to a comparable cohort .Differences in astronaut mortality or morbidity due to spaceflight experience were not detected in several of these studies. There were two cases where a modest increase in the incidence rate of astronaut LTH outcomes was detected. The first suggested an increase in the incidence of melanoma cases in astronauts, where the number of cases in astronauts were similar to the elevated number of cases observed in airplane pilots. The second provided some evidence of elevated numbers of cardiovascular disease events in astronauts compared to an appropriate healthy comparator cohort, which may warrant additional investigation. The lack of detection of LTH risk outcomes should not ease concerns about astronaut LTH. The studies highlighted here constitute only a small portion of the potential LTH conditions that could occur. Once epidemiological studies are performed on all conditions, significant findings may be detected. The analysis of astronaut LTH also suffers from limited numbers of data points because of the limited numbers of astronauts overall and the even fewer who have reached an age where LTH outcomes may begin to manifest. As shuttle and ISS astronauts begin to age and increase the feasibility of analysis, LTH outcomes may be detected. An application of risk quantification is the use of risk metrics within trade studies for resource prioritization and decision making. Trade studies regarding countermeasures to LTH risk outcomes would benefit from a quantification of LTH risk. NASA has ground-based processes in place such as astronaut screening and access to continuous medical monitoring and care during and after their astronaut career which are the main methods for mitigating LTH risk. In-mission countermeasures, such as acceptable levels of medical care and available countermeasures to counter spaceflight related physiological decrements, can mitigate a poor health and performance status immediately post-flight. Identifying appropriate risk metrics, obtaining valid quantities for them, and tying them to LTH countermeasures are necessary steps for realizing their use in trade studies. This presentation will highlight the challenges associated with the identification, quantification, and utilization of LTH risk metrics

Beth Lewandowski↗
NASA NTRS2005

Exploration-Related Research on ISS: Connecting Science Results to Future Missions

In January, 2004, the U.S. President announced The Vision for Space Exploration, and charged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with using the International Space Station (ISS) for research and technology targeted at supporting U.S. space exploration goals. This paper describes: What we have learned from the first four years of research on ISS relative to the exploration mission; The on-going research being conducted in this regard; and Our current understanding of the major exploration mission risks that the ISS can be used to address. Specifically, we discuss research carried out on the ISS to determine the mechanisms by which human health is affected on long-duration missions, and to develop countermeasures to protect humans from the space environment. These bioastronautics experiments are key enablers of future long duration human exploration missions. We also discuss how targeted technological developments can enable mission design trade studies. We discuss the relationship between the ultimate number of human test subjects available on the ISS to the quality and quantity of scientific insight that can be used to reduce health risks to future explorers. We discuss the results of NASA's efforts over the past year to realign the ISS research programs to support a product-driven portfolio that is directed towards reducing the major risks of exploration missions. The fundamental challenge to science on ISS is completing experiments that answer key questions in time to shape design decisions for future exploration. In this context, exploration relevant research must do more than be conceptually connected to design decisions - it must become a part of the mission design process.

Rhatigan, Jennifer L.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Space Mission Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Project

The purpose of the Space Mission Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Project is to extend current ground-based HRA risk prediction techniques to a long-duration, space-based tool. Ground-based HRA methodology has been shown to be a reasonable tool for short-duration space missions, such as Space Shuttle and lunar fly-bys. However, longer-duration deep-space missions, such as asteroid and Mars missions, will require the crew to be in space for as long as 400 to 900 day missions with periods of extended autonomy and self-sufficiency. Current indications show higher risk due to fatigue, physiological effects due to extended low gravity environments, and others, may impact HRA predictions. For this project, Safety & Mission Assurance (S&MA) will work with Human Health & Performance (HH&P) to establish what is currently used to assess human reliabiilty for human space programs, identify human performance factors that may be sensitive to long duration space flight, collect available historical data, and update current tools to account for performance shaping factors believed to be important to such missions. This effort will also contribute data to the Human Performance Data Repository and influence the Space Human Factors Engineering research risks and gaps (part of the HRP Program). An accurate risk predictor mitigates Loss of Crew (LOC) and Loss of Mission (LOM).The end result will be an updated HRA model that can effectively predict risk on long-duration missions.

Boyer, Roger↗
NASA NTRS2020

Remote Support of ISS Payload Operations During the COVID19 Pandemic

As part of the Human Health and Performance Contract (HHPC) with the NASA Johnson Space Center, the Human Research Program’s (HRP) Research Operations and Integration (ROI) element conducts the planning, implementation, and closing of human research operations on-board the International Space Station (ISS). These operations are supported out of the Telescience Support Center (TSC) located in the Mission Control Center at Houston’s Johnson Space Center (MCC-H). HRP ROI has an Emergency Response Plan in place to allow for remote operations to be completed in the case of inclement weather or other natural disaster; however, nominally, the remote support is only expected to last one to two weeks. In response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, HRP ROI was challenged to complete a quick transition to supporting on-orbit operations remotely and distanced for an indefinite amount of time. This shift in ground support required close collaboration with various external groups as well as the implementation or adaptation of various technologies and tools to ensure no loss of science data. Operational adjustments were put into place for ground commanding, telemetry monitoring, personnel staffing and private and public audio and video with the ISS. Adjustments were also put in place for communication and collaboration with MCC-H, the Payload Operation and Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), as well as between the various HRP ROI console team members spread across Houston, TX. The ability to successfully support a variety of on-orbit operations from any remote location is more in demand as the commercialization of low Earth orbit is expanding.

Operations↗
DOE OSTI2025

The development and evolution of biological AMS at Livermore: a perspective

Biological accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) provides ultrasensitive carbon-14 isotopic analysis enabling a deeper understanding of human health concerns by enabling quantification of pharmacokinetics and other molecular endpoints directly in humans. It enables environmentally and human relevant studies of metabolic pathways through the use of very low concentrations of labeled metabolic substrates in cells and organisms. Here, we discuss why AMS is an important tool for the biosciences, the development and evolution of biological AMS at Livermore and discuss technical refinements that will improve the efficiency of operation for the measurement of ultra-trace levels of 14 C, which, long term, will enable greater ease of use and sample throughput.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗