The Medical Operations Branch provides spaceflight mission support on all operational health-related issues and tasks. As part of this support, it defines, develops, and implements requirements for a comprehensive health care program for space flight. From these requirements, we have derived measures to safeguard the health, safety, and well-being of flight crewmembers.
Medical risk is minimized by selecting very healthy individuals as astronauts.
The Medical Operations Branch has developed standards which all astronaut candidates must meet to be considered for selection. We also have annual recertification standards for current astronauts. We perform annual and mission-specific flight certification tests to make sure each astronaut is medically ready to fly. To protect astronauts from exposures which could result in medical problems such as infections during a flight, Medical Operations provides a health stabilization program. This program preserves crewmembers' health by restricting personal contacts for a specific time preceding a mission.