There has been great interest expressed around the world for two NASA astronauts, Butch Willmore and Suni Williams, who just completed an unplanned extended stay on the International Space Station. Butch and Suni returned to Earth in March of 2025 after a nine-month mission that was originally planned as an eight-day flight.
Human spaceflight involves many unknowns and challenges
Keeping crew members alive, healthy and at peak performance throughout spaceflight means always being prepared for the unexpected. An extended mission like this highlights the importance of having a highly skilled health and medical team supporting our astronaut corps.
Maintaining our astronauts’ health and ensuring they are in good physical shape to accomplish all aspects of their mission is a complex challenge involving a wide range of disciplines. The effort to ensure crew health and performance starts before flight, continues throughout the mission and carries on through post-flight recovery and rehabilitation.
It takes a highly skilled team
The crew-members’ primary care providers are aerospace medicine physicians, known as flight surgeons. However, flight surgeons are only one part of the team. The astronaut health and medical team includes biomedical engineers, behavioral health specialists, physical strength conditioning and rehabilitation experts and a variety of other disciplines.
Beyond the medical team, Human System Engineering is a critical aspect of supporting astronaut health and performance. Human System Engineers ensure that vehicle systems and hardware not only meet their functional requirements but are optimized to interact with the crew to maximize both crew and system performance. Biomedical research is also critical to address the human risks associated with long-duration spaceflight such as hostile environments, space radiation, isolation and living in a variety of gravitational fields. This research provides better understanding of human adaptation to spaceflight and planetary environments and in turn provides a foundation for the development of effective countermeasures to protect crews from these risks.
NASA’s, Johnson Space Center, is completing the Human Health and Performance Contract 2 (HHPC2), a follow-on to the existing HHPC, to provide major support services for the Human Health and Performance Directorate, including ensuring crew health and safety, conducting biomedical research, and developing human systems technologies. Loyal Source brings unparalleled innovation and expertise to tackle these challenges. Our foremost priority is the safe and successful execution of all missions, while identifying and implementing groundbreaking innovations and enhancements to meet the challenges of the future.
John Sims is the Director of NASA programs at Loyal Source Government Services, an Orlando-based workforce solutions provider. Before joining Loyal Source, John spent more than 41 years supporting NASA Human Spaceflight missions. He is the recipient of the NASA Outstanding Leadership, Exceptional Service and Exceptional Achievement Medals as well as multiple Johnson Space Center commendations. John has a lifelong passion for spaceflight both in fact and fiction.