In Flight Anthropometry and Health Surveillance for Future Exploration Missions

As astronauts are exposed to microgravity the body shape and size change which can affect suit fit, health surveillance, and hardware configurations. Previous studies on the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle have shown up to 3% stature and 6% sitting height change can occur due to microgravity exposure (Young et al., 2020, 2021). While these studies provided critical data previously unavailable for space exploration, several limitations were also noted for Lunar and Mars Missions. Given the need for high-temporal resolution and future mission relevant anthropometry data which was not fully available in the past in-flight crew anthropometry studies, a new measurement initiative was recently kicked off with NASA. One of the key expansions for the new data collection is incorporating crew medical monitoring components in addition to the traditional focus for suit and hardware fit. This data will be used in conjunction with body mass to determine if there is any correlation between the two sets of data to assist in detecting health and body changes that may occur during future exploration missions where body mass hardware is not available. The timepoints were also adjusted to capture how quickly the changes might occur, changes prior to return to earth, and how quickly crewmembers’ recovery, with an aim to capture both the transient phase and steady-state phases of crew anthropometric changes. This is particularly important as the Lunar Missions involve more frequent gravity changes, such as 1-g to 0-g, then 0-g to 1/6-g.

Ideally, this data would be captured using 3d scan technology as in the ground laboratory. However, due to constraints, manual measurements are currently being collected while scan technology is developed. As technology improves and potential hardware is developed that might work on ISS or lunar surface, ground-based efforts continue to collect scan data preflight and postflight. Continued effort has been in progress to identify the optimal technology for in-flight body scanning, which can substantially improve the data resolution matching the ground reference measurements.