NASA Space Apps 2026 · Create Health Monitoring Software for Astronauts on Space Missions

About Hygieia

Hygieia is named after the Greek goddess of health. It is an onboard crew-health assistant for deep-space missions, where the flight surgeon can be up to 22 minutes away each way. It learns each astronaut's personal baseline, says in plain words when they drift from it and why, proposes the smallest change that brings them back to green, checks who is fit for upcoming tasks, and guides the crew through a medical emergency without waiting for Earth.

The challenge was authored by the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB).

How it works, and its limits

Radiation, space-weather and link-delay figures come from space-agency data, and each one links to its source.
Bone loss is inferred from exercise adherence. It is not measured.
The AI chat uses a cloud API that a Mars crew would not have. It stands in for a future onboard model. Triage, alerts, standing orders and scoring never depend on it.
The 22-minute delay is the worst-case one-way Earth–Mars light time. The app shortens the wait to 20 seconds so it can be watched.
Solar particle events on the mission timeline follow the timing of real events recorded by NASA DONKI.
Voice commands use the browser's speech recognition, which in Chrome and Edge needs a network. Buttons, typed commands and read-aloud prompts work offline.
The triage trees follow general first-aid logic. A flight surgeon would approve the protocols flown on a mission.

Out of scope: sign-in, encryption, real device integration, regulatory compliance. See every source on the Sources page.

NASA's five hazards of human spaceflight, and what Hygieia does about each

ⓘ source

Space radiation	Dose model per environment built on published measurements, a neutron channel, cumulative dose against the plan, real solar particle events replayed from NASA DONKI, and a storm-shelter checklist.
Isolation and confinement	Mood check-in, sleep and light tracking, shared crew time as a recovery lever, cooperative team goals, and a journal that stays private.
Distance from Earth	Triage that works with no network, standing orders written in advance, a delayed-link queue, and compressed incident reports.
Gravity fields	Exercise-prescription tracking, balance and eye regions on the body map, and gravity-transition checks in the surface profiles.
Hostile/closed environments	Cabin CO₂, pressure, temperature, noise and light feed alerts and triage, plus an infection early warning.

NASA's 17 human research risks: honest coverage

Each links to its knowledge-base note.

ⓘ source

Monitored (9)

Tracked every day against each astronaut's own baseline.

Self-check or triage only (5)

Hygieia prompts a check or guides an emergency; it has no continuous measurement.

Knowledge base only (3)

Explained, not observed.

Bone changes are followed through exercise adherence, which is a proxy. Radiation-induced cancer is covered by dose tracking only. NASA describes SANS as its leading spaceflight-related health risk; Hygieia offers a self-check, not a measurement.

Use of SI

Code: most of the application code, tests and the data-fetch scripts were written and debugged with Claude Code (Anthropic), directed and reviewed by the team.
Visual design: the interface, the body map, the heart graphic and trace, and the logo are SI-generated, drawn as code (SVG and CSS). No image-generation model was used.
Writing and translation: the README, the documentation, the knowledge-base notes and the French and Arabic interface text were drafted with SI.
Research: SI was used to check each dataset and link on the Sources page against its original page.
In the app: the Ask Hygieia chat is answered by an OpenAI language model. Its responses are SI-generated. Scoring, alerts, forecasts, standing orders and triage are ordinary code and do not use SI.

No SI-generated content uses NASA logos, flags or mission identifiers. Crew members and their health readings are simulated.

Team Jovian Elites

Joelle El Homsi
Elie Chalhoub
Rahma Bezzaouia
Ahmad Abu Zainab

The same engine and offline triage serve remote communities on Earth, where a clinician is also far away: choose the Remote clinic profile to try it. See also the Canadian Space Agency on why space science matters on the ground. ⓘ source

Built with

Google Cloud. The app runs as a container on Cloud Run. The database is rebuilt from the seed on every cold start.
GoDaddy. Domain name pointing at the hosted app, and hosting for the static project page.
Microsoft. GitHub Copilot and Teams for the team; an optional mirror on Azure.
Miro. Architecture and storyline boards for the pitch.
Meteomatics. Not used. Earth mode takes its outdoor heat data from NASA POWER, which needs no account.

Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Recharts, SQLite with Drizzle, the OpenAI API for chat.

Reading onboard data…

About Hygieia

The challenge was authored by the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB).

Space radiation

Dose model per environment built on published measurements, a neutron channel, cumulative dose against the plan, real solar particle events replayed from NASA DONKI, and a storm-shelter checklist.

Isolation and confinement

Mood check-in, sleep and light tracking, shared crew time as a recovery lever, cooperative team goals, and a journal that stays private.

Distance from Earth

Triage that works with no network, standing orders written in advance, a delayed-link queue, and compressed incident reports.

Gravity fields

Exercise-prescription tracking, balance and eye regions on the body map, and gravity-transition checks in the surface profiles.

Hostile/closed environments

Cabin CO₂, pressure, temperature, noise and light feed alerts and triage, plus an infection early warning.