In case of emergency in deep space, video game might help
Imagine traveling hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, perhaps to Mars, when you feel a sudden tightness in your chest.
There’s a shooting pain in your neck and arms. You can’t breathe.
Could this be a heart attack?
Time is of the essence. But there’s a 40-minute delay in communicating with Mission Control, where a doctor is on staff to walk the astronauts through diagnosing and treating any health problems that arise.
Sam Glassenberg, the founder and CEO of Chicago-based Level Ex, thinks he has the solution: a video game that would train astronauts to fix the problem.
“With a 40-minute delay going into deep space, that’s a real problem,” Glassenberg said.
Level Ex, founded in 2015, already has designed such an interface for doctors. Now, the company is adapting the programming for the space environment with the help of a grant from Translational Research Institute for Space Health, run by Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Space Medicine. The institute is funded by NASA’s Human Research Program.
The institute “is dedicated to adopting the most advanced terrestrial technologies that have the potential to address NASA’s future space health challenges,” Chief Health Innovation Officer Aenor Sawyer said in a statement. “By adapting (Level Ex’s) technology to include space conditions, we will lay the foundation for essential medical training and future real-time autonomous guidance for astronauts.”
A journey to Mars remains a distant goal for
NASA. Top officials have tentatively aimed for a human mission to Mars in 2033, but they admit that timeline is aggressive. NASA still needs to develop a spacecraft capable of transporting humans to Mars; a method of propulsion to cover the distance more quickly; and a surface-landing vehicle that can handle the Martian climate.
Deep space health effects
NASA scientists know long-duration space travel causes humans to lose bone density, struggle with vision problems and experience muscle atrophy.
But before astronauts are sent to Mars, they need to know more. Experiments being conducted on the International Space Station, which flies in low Earth orbit, are helping to achieve that.
Astronaut Scott Kelly lived on the space station for 340 days in 2015 and 2016 — a record amount of time for the orbiting laboratory — to study the effects of long-duration spaceflight.
Kelly’s mission yielded numerous scientific results after he returned to Earth. By comparing him to his twin brother, fellow astronaut Mark Kelly, NASA was able to learn many things about how space impacts the human body.
For example, researchers discovered that Scott Kelly’s telomeres — the ends of his DNA strands — lengthened during his mission. Telomeres protect chromosomes — without them, cells don’t work properly — and typically shorten as humans age.
Once he returned to Earth, the telomeres shortened within 48 hours and returned to mostly normal lengths in the following months.
In April, NASA announced that Christina Koch would be the next astronaut to spend an extended period of time on the space station, 328 days, to continue these studies.
“Astronauts demonstrate amazing resilience and adaptability in response to long duration spaceflight exposure,” said Jennifer Fogarty, chief scientist of the Human Research Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in April. “This will enable successful exploration missions with healthy, performance-ready astronauts.”
Given the health issues scientists already know about, there’s no doubt that astronauts will need to respond to medical situations on a long trip. And that’s where Level Ex comes in.
Half-million users
About 500,000 medical professionals play Level Ex games on their phones, which enable them to select the type of health problem and the situation in which it arose.
They then try to solve the problem, using the same instruments that would be available to them in a hospital.
One popular case is called the “Carpenter’s Conundrum,” in which players have to remove a nail from bronchi, the body’s main passageway into the lungs.
“All the tissue behaves like it would in real life, it just runs on the phone. And it’s all 3-D,” Glassenberg said.
Glassenberg would not disclose the amount of money Level Ex received, but the grant will last one year and focus on building the framework for the game. The company’s current programming does not zero gravity scenarios: For example, a heart that has been subjected to zero gravity for an extended period of time will look different than a normal heart in someone who has never left Earth, he said.
Eventually, he hopes astronauts can use the program to train for medical scenarios on the ground, as well as while on board a spacecraft traveling into deep space.
“Not only do I foresee this partnership shaping the future of spaceflight medicine, but there is no doubt that our discoveries and advancements will make Level Ex’s technology more robust, which will benefit terrestrial medical education across the board,” Glassenberg said.