The tie-up comes as, “NASA advances its Artemis program to send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon, build a sustained human presence there with a Moon Base, and build on their foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.”, according to Google. Google and NASA are collaborating to develop an autonomous robotic medical assistant designed to support astronauts facing health emergencies and manage routine operational tasks during future deep-space expeditions.
The system builds directly upon the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant, an artificial intelligence platform Google and NASA began evaluating in 2025. An astronaut on a future deep space mission to Mars could face severe operational challenges—including round-trip communication latencies of up to 44 minutes, making real-time medical guidance for crew nearly impossible. To solve this, the Google team harnessed Google Cloud G4 instances to rapidly train the underlying models, fine-tuning the 4-billion parameter Pi0 model in just 2.5 hours. Over the last two years, the team tested approximately 15 different edge computing devices to find ones that run efficiently on lightweight, low-power hardware required for future Mars missions.
Because every minute in space is a strictly limited resource, reducing the physical burden on astronauts to maximize their time for science and discovery is a top priority. Because they must also rely on limited sensory input like cameras, JPL is adapting satellite situational awareness intelligence tools—originally designed to track objects in orbit—to help the robotic system navigate and understand its 3D surroundings. Because vision-language-action (VLA) models connect language directly to physical movement, astronauts could direct the robotic system flexibly via standard English text prompts.
“An astronaut on a future deep space mission to Mars could face severe operational challenges, including round-trip communication latencies of up to 44 minutes,” said Jim Kelly, vice president of Google’s public sector division. To maximize its utility for a lean crew, the robotic system is designed as a versatile “payload” handler capable of managing cargo, logistics, and equipment. In a recent proof-of-concept technology demonstration, the robotic system was tasked with a complex “pick-and-place” maneuver to locate and move a medical bag. By implementing an “eye-to-hand” camera configuration for enhanced spatial awareness, the open-source Pi0 model—developed by Physical Intelligence on Google Cloud infrastructure— achieved an initial 85% baseline success rate in these early lab environments, providing a strong foundation for the next phase of rigorous training and safety refinement.
The initiative aims to address a critical hurdle for long-duration spaceflight: Providing advanced healthcare when distance renders real-time communication with Earth impossible. When not handling medical duties alongside onboard crew, the dual-purpose system is envisioned to take on routine operational workloads, including hardware maintenance, equipment transport, and inventory management. The effort convenes specialists across multiple organizations, including Google Cloud, NASA’s Human Research Program, the robotics division at Johnson Space Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That project focuses on enabling crews to independently diagnose and manage medical issues when signal delays prevent rapid consultations with terrestrial flight surgeons. Presently, the project remains in an experimental phase. Current laboratory testing is focused on validating foundational robotic manipulation and general utility tasks, with project engineers noting that fully autonomous medical intervention in microgravity remains a long-term development goal. As NASA advances its Artemis program to send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon, build a sustained human presence there with a Moon Base, and build on their foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars, crew safety and Earth-independent autonomy are paramount. The future Moon Base in the lunar South Pole region of the Moon is planned to support sustained human presence. To potentially address this challenge, NASA’s Human Research Program, Johnson Space Center Robotics Team, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) collaborated with Google Public Sector to develop a robotic system. By handling routine logistics, this system could free up astronauts to focus on what humans do best: complex science and discovery. When not needed for routine maintenance like organizing tools or securing compartments, it can pivot to medical support. For example, if an astronaut experiences severe back pain—a potential symptom of kidney stones—the robot could retrieve and prepare an ultrasound machine. This enables the human crew medical officer to focus entirely on analyzing the scan and treating the patient. Operating safely alongside humans in confined spacecraft is a complex challenge. Unlike factory robots in fixed, human-free environments, space systems utilizing Super Intelligence (SI) require flexible, human-directed tools to safely adapt to close quarters. To test this safely at Johnson Space Center’s iMETRO facility, Google DeepMind’s MuJoCo simulator was used, which is an advanced physics engine that allows the SI to practice complex movements in a highly accurate virtual environment before touching real hardware. Processing these complex tasks requires significant computing power, which presents another hurdle: space is the ultimate edge computing environment. Spacecraft cannot rely on continuous connections to Earth-based data centers. Crucially, they demonstrated that the fine-tuned models can then operate locally on compact, energy-efficient edge devices. Looking ahead, the ultimate goal is to build a robotic system that can execute a variety of tasks via simple voice instructions, under the astronauts’ direct supervision and command. For instance, the robot might be directed to assist with routine health monitoring—such as capturing basic vitals or simple ultrasounds—under the strict guidance of a human crew medical officer. This ensures astronauts receive the physical assistance they might not be able to perform by themselves, without ever replacing human decision-making. This collaboration between Google Public Sector and NASA can help pave the way for increasingly difficult missions that push the bounds of scientific discovery. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Last year, Google Public Sector shared progress on the development of the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA) – an automated Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) designed to assist astronauts with real-time medical guidance in remote and isolated environments. Today, we are building on this innovation with the development of a proof-of-concept physical, robotic system that aims to support deep space missions and could assist astronauts during NASA missions.