Steve Swanson ISS

Wyle Laboratories has secured a contract with Nasa to provide biomedical, medical and health services to its future human spaceflight platforms being managed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, US.

Planned to be effective from 1 October, the human health and performance contract will be for an initial five years, with options for one three-year and one two-year extension. The deal has a maximum potential value of $1.44bn.

Wyle will provide occupational health services at Johnson and Nasa’s White Sands test facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, as well as develop technologies to mitigate potential risks to the health, safety and performance of spaceflight crews.

 

"Wyle will provide occupational health services…as well as develop technologies to mitigate potential risks to the health, safety and performance of spaceflight crews."

Services will cover fundamental and applied biomedical research and operational space medicine; occupational health and medicine, as well as management of clinical, biomedical, space food and environmental laboratories.

The company will also provide spacecraft environment monitoring and management, biomedical engineering, biomedical flight hardware, and payload and hardware integration services.

Work under the contract will support ongoing research aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and help the agency in its planned journey to Mars.

Human health and performance directorate at Johnson space centre is responsible for managing activities associated with crew health, safety and performance.

To manage this contract, Wyle will collaborate with Lockheed Martin, the University of Texas medical branch of Galveston; Intelligent Automation, Anadarko Industries, MEI Technologies, JES Tech, University of Houston, Intuitive Machines and GeoControl Systems.

Image: Nasa astronaut Steve Swanson exercising on the T2 treadmill aboard the International Space Station. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.