NASA researchers are testing an artificial intelligence-powered medical assistant designed to help astronauts diagnose and manage health conditions during future missions to the Moon and Mars, where communication delays could limit access to Earth-based medical support.
The Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), under development at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, is being evaluated as a clinical decision support system capable of providing medical guidance when real-time communication with doctors on Earth is unavailable. The system uses RamaLama, a Red Hat-backed open source tool, to run AI models locally rather than relying on cloud connectivity.
Originally developed as a proof of concept using AI trained on spaceflight medical literature, the project has since been adapted for fully disconnected edge deployment. It currently runs on the terrestrial twin of the Spaceborne Computer aboard the International Space Station, built on HPE hardware.
RamaLama enables the CMO-DA to perform local inference using both large language models (LLMs) for medical reasoning and Vision Language Models (VLMs) for analysing images of symptoms. Running the models directly on the device allows astronauts to access medical guidance without depending on a connection to Earth.
The use of open source software also enables researchers to evaluate the system in a reproducible and auditable environment, an important consideration for mission-critical applications involving human safety.
NASA is currently refining the system through terrestrial testing before demonstrating the technology to agency leadership for evaluation. The next iteration of the CMO-DA is expected to integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI), providing a more stable platform for managing containerised AI applications in remote environments.
While the project is intended to support deep-space exploration, the underlying edge AI technologies could also have applications in delivering healthcare in remote and disconnected regions on Earth.
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