The Data Science of Health in Space

Spaceflight exposes humans to unique stressors that remodel biology. Space health is emerging as a data science discipline grounded in multiomic atlases, harmonized biobanks, and open, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR)-aligned infrastructures. We review this ecosystem, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s GeneLab; the Open Science Data Repository, European Space Agency, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) platforms; the Space Omics and Medical Atlas; and mission-specific repositories, and how it is used to integrate heterogeneous omics with clinical, environmental, and digital phenotypes. We highlight machine learning and causal inference approaches to identify conserved signatures of risk and resilience and to align astronaut datasets with large terrestrial cohorts and disease models. Spaceflight functions as an accelerated model of aging and systems-level stress, enabling discovery of biomarkers and countermeasures with reciprocal benefits for Earth-based medicine. Finally, we outline future directions, including countermeasure-prioritization pipelines; astronaut digital twins and virtual organs; operational analytics and wearables for personalized risk management; and federated, privacy-preserving data ecosystems that extend predictive, individualized space health to the operational edge.

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Publication Details

Journal
Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
Published
2026-05-18
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-biodatasci-092724-045605
Primary Topic
Spaceflight effects on biology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

The Data Science of Health in Space

Jiwoon Park, Jacqueline Proszynski, Anurag Sakharkar, Julian Willett et al.
Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
Spaceflight effects on biology
article

The Data Science of Health in Space

Jiwoon Park, Jacqueline Proszynski, Anurag Sakharkar, Julian Willett, JangKeun Kim, Eyup Alper Saygili, Theodore M. Nelson, Akua A. Agyemang, Christopher E. Mason
article en

Abstract

Spaceflight exposes humans to unique stressors that remodel biology. Space health is emerging as a data science discipline grounded in multiomic atlases, harmonized biobanks, and open, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR)-aligned infrastructures. We review this ecosystem, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s GeneLab; the Open Science Data Repository, European Space Agency, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) platforms; the Space Omics and Medical Atlas; and mission-specific repositories, and how it is used to integrate heterogeneous omics with clinical, environmental, and digital phenotypes. We highlight machine learning and causal inference approaches to identify conserved signatures of risk and resilience and to align astronaut datasets with large terrestrial cohorts and disease models. Spaceflight functions as an accelerated model of aging and systems-level stress, enabling discovery of biomarkers and countermeasures with reciprocal benefits for Earth-based medicine. Finally, we outline future directions, including countermeasure-prioritization pipelines; astronaut digital twins and virtual organs; operational analytics and wearables for personalized risk management; and federated, privacy-preserving data ecosystems that extend predictive, individualized space health to the operational edge.

Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University (SA), University of Pittsburgh (US), Cornell University (US), Presbyterian Hospital (US), MIND Research Institute (US), Istanbul University (TR)
Industry, innovation and infrastructure
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Spaceflight effects on biology
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