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NASA Space Flight Human System Standard - Volume 1; Crew Health

NASA policy for establishing standards to protect the health and safety of crew, and for
providing health and medical programs for crewmembers during all phases of space flight, is
authorized by NPD 1000.3, The NASA Organization, and NPD 8900.5, NASA Health and
Medical Policy for Human Space Exploration. NPD 8900.1, Medical Operations
Responsibilities in Support of Human Space Flight Programs and NPD 8900.3, Astronaut
Medical and Dental Observation Study and Care Program, authorize the specific provision of
health and medical programs for crewmembers. NASA's policy is to establish standards for
providing a healthy and safe environment for crewmembers, and to provide health and medical
programs for crewmembers during all phases of space flight. Standards are established to
optimize crew health and performance, thus contributing to overall mission success, and to
prevent negative long—term health consequences due to space flight. In this document, the Office
of the Chief Health and Medical Officer establishes NASA’s space flight Crew Health standards
for the pre—flight, in-flight, and post—flight phases of human space flight.
Human system standards are established to guide and focus the development of the crew health
requirements as a means of protecting space—faring crews. The standards presented in this
document, NASA Space Flight Human System Standards, Volume I: Crew Health, are intended
to complement the overall set of human standards for space flight, which also includes NASA
Space Flight Human Systems Standards, Volume II: Habitability and Environmental Health;
NASA Medical Standard for Crewmembers; and current medical standards of clinical practice.
Combined, these standards provide Agency technical requirements for an appropriate
environment for human habitation, certification of human participants, the necessary level of
medical care, and risk—mitigation strategies against the deleterious effects of space flight. The
standards described in this document include levels of care, permissible exposure limits, fitness-
for—duty criteria, and permissible outcome limits as a means of defining successful operating
criteria for the human system. These standards help ensure mission completion, limit morbidity,
and reduce the risk of mortality during space flight missions. See Appendix A for an overview
document map.
All standards are based on the best available scientific and clinical evidence, as well as
operational experience from Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle, Shuttle/MIR (United Soviet Socialists
Republic (USSR) Space Station), and International Space Station (ISS) missions. Standards are
periodically and regularly reviewed, especially as the concept of operations and mission
parameters for a program become defined, and may be updated as new evidence emerges.