OBJECTIVES:
There is a need to identify thresholds of muscle performance, below which mission task completion is likely to be impaired. This is important for many reasons such as informing the requirements for future exploration exercise hardware and prescriptions so that equipment can be scaled to fitness needs, predicting crewmember's readiness to perform the more demanding exploration tasks that may occur at any point during the mission as well as to inform preflight exercise training needs. This study used a standard set of critical mission tasks that could be used to threshold cardiovascular, skeletal muscle, and sensorimotor performance. The study was more operational than hypothesis driven. Previously validated techniques were used to identify fitness thresholds for performance of a new set of mission-related tasks. The main objective was to identify thresholds of muscle performance, below which task performance is impaired. A variety of muscle performance measurements were evaluated.

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Crew health and performance is critical to successful human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. The Human Research Program (HRP) investigates and mitigates the highest risks to human health and performance, providing essential countermeasures and technologies for human space exploration. Risks include physiological and performance effects from hazards such as radiation, altered gravity, and hostile environments, as well as unique challenges in medical support, human factors, and behavioral health support. The HRP utilizes an Integrated Research Plan (IRP) to identify the approach and research activities planned to address these risks, which are assigned to specific Elements within the program. The Human Research Roadmap is the web-based tool for communicating the IRP content.

The Human Research Roadmap is located at: https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/