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INTRODUCTION: A suite of human health and performance metrics can be used to provide a holistic cognitive, physical, and emotional view of an individual and assess how well they are integrated with the overall system during spaceflight missions. The combination of such individual metrics as defined here is notionally termed “crewmember operational state.”

METHODS: This work identifies and defines the contributing components that comprise the proposed crewmember operational state.

RESULTS: Considerations of how to measure the components in a spaceflight environment are summarized and the steps required to analyze and integrate these measurements into an operational framework are outlined. Use of the measurements and integration steps are then extended into several applications relevant to human spaceflight mission design and operations.

DISCUSSION: For the framework and applications defined here to become operationally feasible, several limitations and gaps that remain to be addressed are presented with recommended future research and enabling technology advancement needs.

Zero M, Klaus D, Arquilla K, Fanchiang C. Defining and measuring crewmember operational state for spaceflight operations. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2024; 95(12):919–929.

Keywords: human health and performance; human spaceflight mission operations; crewmember status
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Copyright: Reprint and copyright © by the Aerospace Medical Association, Alexandria, VA.
Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.

Proposed components of crewmember operational state organized by relevant cognitive, physical, emotional, and overlapping states.


Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.

Levels of invasiveness and obtrusiveness in crewmember operational state measurements with example measurement techniques.


Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.

Streaming data during Pre-Task, Task, and Post-Task activities to a central computing system for data analysis.


Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.

Summary of data processing, analysis, and display pipeline integrating crewmember operational state measurements into spaceflight operations.


Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.

The primary components of the human spaceflight operational paradigm and their interactions.


Contributor Notes

Address correspondence to: Michael Zero, Ph.D., M.S., Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, 3775 Discovery Dr., Boulder, CO 80303, United States; michael.zero@colorado.edu.
Received: Nov 01, 2023
Accepted: Aug 01, 2024