Picture yourself on a future mission to Mars. You’re floating in zero gravity, tools strapped to your suit, when a crewmate slices open their arm while repairing equipment. On Earth, you’d dial 911. In orbit, you’d radio Houston. But on Mars, help is millions of miles away. The signal takes more than 20 minutes to travel one way, and then another 20 minutes for Mission Control to respond. Nearly an hour might pass before you hear back. That’s time you simply don’t have when an astronaut is injured.
That scenario might sound like science fiction, but it’s the kind of problem NASA is planning for right now. Astronauts are trained to handle basic medical issues, but they’re not surgeons, and a crisis could demand more than their training covers. What they need is the equivalent of a doctor at the ready, one who can guide them step-by-step through any emergency.
At Arizona State University, a team of computer scientists believes they have the answer. Backed by new funding from NASA, Hasti Seifi and Pooyan Fazli are developing a lightweight augmented reality headset that can serve as a just-in-time medical assistant.
Seifi, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU, says the new project builds on past successful work.
“We realized our research on question-answering systems could be incredibly useful in space medicine,” Seifi says. “If something happens mid-procedure, non-medical experts need quick, accurate answers. Waiting 20 minutes is simply not practical.”