MEEVA Project

Medical Equipment for Extra-Vehicular Activities

<span data-metadata=""><span data-buffer="">Project Overview

Human Space exploration presents many technical challenges when it comes to guaranteeing the safety of astronauts, both on a physiological and psychological level; therefore, it is crucial to train future astronauts and test the technologies that will enable them to venture beyond our planet beforehand.

Analog missions aim to simulate the environment of an extraterrestrial exploration mission on Earth, confining groups of Analog Astronauts (AA) in moon-like environments with a wide set of tasks and experiments to perform, including ExtraVehicular Activities (EVA).

EVAs present many risks for AA, such as extreme temperatures and high psycho-physical stress levels. Developing advanced life support equipment in the context of analog missions is essential to address these challenges, allowing for a safer and more efficient task completion during the mission. 

An objective assessment of the astronaut’s physiological parameters and stress level can give the Mission Control Center (MCC) a more accurate understanding of the situation, increasing the probability of a successful outcome and decreasing the risk of unexpected issues regarding the astronaut’s health.

But how can stress be measured? And how to make the EVA a more comfortable experience? Project MEEVA, “Medical Equipment for ExtraVehicular Activities”, addresses both issues through the development and implementation of an undervest for AA.
The developed system will be tested during the “Asclepios IV” analog mission.

MEEVA Undervest

MEEVA is a system designed to measure the astronaut’s vital parameters and inform the MCC regarding the health status of the astronaut, thanks to a physiological stress estimator.

The MEEVA system consists of an undervest with integrated sensors and a temperature control system (TCS). The strategically located sensors provide a real-time measurement of the astronaut’s physiological stress indicators, such as heart rate, skin and core temperature. The readings are then processed by the on board microcontrollers, outputting an estimation of the current stress level of the astronaut which is then compared with a final questionnaire at the end of each mission.

The team is split into four groups, which reflect the subsystems of the undervest: Systems Engineering, Space Medicine, Thermal Control, and Electronics.

Achievements

International Astronautical Congress Baku 2023

During the IAC 2023 in Baku, the project was presented through the paper “MEEVA: A smart system to estimate and mitigate stress effects during Analogue Astronauts’ EVAs”, which has been a great opportunity to collect feedback from the scientific community and to expand our network.
The paper can be consulted here: MEEVA: A smart system to estimate and mitigate stress effects during Analogue Astronauts’ EVAs | Request PDF (researchgate.net)

Team

Project Manager

Space Medicine

TCS

Electronics

Systems Engineering

Andrea Sportillo

Maneesh Kumar Verma

Giulia Leda Spinelli

Pierfrancesco Pinto

Raoul Torri

Sponsor & Collaborators