NOVA is a concept for NASA Space Apps 2026. The interfaces are designs, the crew and numbers are demo data, and the models describe the architecture we propose.
Each one would be trained on real science on Earth and built to run on board, offline. Together they turn a wearable, a short voice check-in and the ship's radiation sensors into one daily answer: how ready is each astronaut today?
Pulse, motion and skin temperature, night after night.
PhysioNet sleep studies · crew dataHeart rate variability against each person's own baseline.
HRV research · personal baselineSleep debt and circadian timing, to forecast alertness.
Two-process sleep model (Borbély)A one-minute evening chat. No forms to fill in.
Small language model on boardDose budget per person and warnings when the Sun erupts.
NASA DONKI · GOES · MSL RADExercise, ultrasound and eye exams the crew already does.
NASA Human Research ProgramA 6 KB report crosses up to 22 light-minutes to Earth. The plan: Nova learns there overnight, and a smarter version flies back to the ship.
One night of the loop, running live. Move the ship farther from Earth, hide it behind the Sun, or try to slip a bad update past Mission Control.
Illustrative simulation of the proposed design. One-way light time between Earth and Mars ranges from about 3 to 22 minutes, and around solar conjunction, roughly every 26 months, Mars missions pause commanding for about two weeks (NASA). Report and update sizes, alert error and approvals are design targets and demo data.
Drag through a mission to Mars and watch the dose build up against NASA's career limit. Then hit the crew with a solar storm.
Illustrative mission: 180 days of cruise each way and 500 days on Mars. Daily doses measured by Curiosity's RAD: 1.84 mSv in cruise (Zeitlin et al., 2013) and 0.64 mSv on the surface (Hassler et al., 2014). Storm values are illustrative.
average distance from Earth to Mars
for a message to reach home, one way
of hip bone density lost in microgravity
for a round trip to Mars, over NASA's 600 mSv career limit
Meet Nova, her friends and the training for Mars.
NOVA is the concept our team is taking to the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2026 (November 14–15), for the challenge "Create Health Monitoring Software for Astronauts". In those 48 hours we'll build a working prototype. The interfaces here are designs; the crew and numbers are demo data.
It's designed not to. Every model would run on board, offline. Once a night, Nova would send Mission Control a report of about 6 KB, smaller than a photo.
The astronaut decides. Vital signs go to the flight surgeon, feelings only to their psychologist, and their journal stays theirs.
No. Nova watches every minute and explains what changed and why. The decisions stay with the crew and their doctors.
It would come from NASA open science (OSDR, DONKI, MSL RAD), analog missions like HERA and CHAPEA, and public sleep and heart datasets from PhysioNet.
NASA Space Apps Challenge · November 14–15, 2026
