Submitting Formal Proposals to NASA on the “PHM for Astronauts” Project to Run on the ISS

摘要

This paper discusses an unsolicited proposal to NASA to implement the “Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) for Astronauts” project, the first international collaborative project to run on the International Space Station (ISS). The collaborative project is to validate the “PHM for Human Health and Performance (HH&P)” concept that the author introduced in his “System Health Management and Space Medicine Predictive Diagnostics. Common Concepts and Approaches.” paper in 2012. Since then the concept has been elaborated, refined, and further evolved in a dozen papers published by the author and his coauthors from the PHM Society and universities of United States and Canada. Following the NASA language for unsolicited proposals and discussing the project on validation of the advanced concept and corresponding technology candidates with predictive screening capability the paper articulates both the novelty of and need in implementing the to-be-validated concept on crew health maintenance in terms of recommendations by experienced astronauts and healthcare professionals on crewed space programs. The proposal particularly suggests NASA to employ PHM -based solutions with predictive screening capability, providing early and actionable real-time warnings of impending health issues that otherwise would have gone undetected unless a symptom is manifested or a sign is detected at a relatively late stage.