{"id":72433,"date":"2025-08-10T13:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T13:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72433\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T13:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T13:41:09","slug":"nasa-and-google-collaborate-on-ai-doctor-for-mars-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72433\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA and Google Collaborate on AI Doctor for Mars Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

As tech giants like Apple turn their eyes towards AI-powered healthcare<\/a>, Google is now building<\/a> a new AI doctor in collaboration with NASA. But you might never get a chance to use the new model, unless you’re planning a trip to Mars, that is.<\/p>\n

According to the NASA proof-of-concept slide deck, first spotted<\/a> by TechCrunch, the project aims to tackle the problems of multi-year, long-distance space travel, dealing with issues like no real-time communication with Earth, no way to send medical samples back home, and the possibility of no evacuations in an emergency. For reference, Mars missions would have a lag <\/a>of up to 223 minutes each way, making conventional real-time medical consultation near impossible.<\/p>\n

The new tool, dubbed the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), will help provide medical advice and diagnostics completely independently of Earth. Per the slides, NASA eventually plans for the tool to incorporate things like ultrasound imaging and additional sources of biometric data in later versions.<\/p>\n

The CMO-DA comes as part of the Artemis program, a NASA-led Moon exploration initiative, with the long-term goal of creating a permanent base on the Moon and making human missions to Mars. The tool runs on Google Cloud\u2019s Vertex AI environment and uses open-source language models (LLMs) such as Llama 3 and Mistral-3 Small. The tool’s source code is entirely owned by NASA, according to a Google spokesperson speaking to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

The project\u2019s team tested the AI diagnostics against a basket of common maladies using a panel of three doctors, including one who is also an astronaut.<\/p>\n

Recommended by Our Editors<\/p>\n

The model performed broadly well, achieving a 74% accuracy rate for flank pain, an 80% accuracy rate for ear pain, and an 88% accuracy rate for ankle injury.<\/p>\n

Still, NASA highlights several potential pitfalls the chatbot will have to work around, such as lack of trust in AI tools\u2014where even advanced models can make basic errors<\/a>\u2014and lack of data on spaceflight-related pathophysiology, for example how partial gravity conditions can impact health.<\/p>\n

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About Will McCurdy<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I\u2019m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I\u2019ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.<\/p>\n

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Read the latest from Will McCurdy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As tech giants like Apple turn their eyes towards AI-powered healthcare, Google is now building a new AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-72433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}