Google, NASA Build Robotic Doctor for Future Moon and Mars Missions

Google and Google is working with NASA to create a robot that can help astronauts with health problems and daily tasks on trips to the Moon and Mars. The project wants to make the crew safer and make it easier for them to handle complicated space trips without needing so much help, from Earth.

According to Google the collaboration comes as "NASA is working on the Artemis program to send astronauts on harder missions to explore more of the Moon create a place where people can live and work on the Moon called a Moon Base and prepare for the first trips to Mars with people, on board."

One of the challenges for astronauts on deep‑space missions is that astronauts cannot get medical help. I imagine astronauts who stay on the International Space Station usually can call doctors away but astronauts who travel to Mars may have to wait for long periods before they can talk to doctors, on Earth.

“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.

The latest project builds on the Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant (CMO-DA), an artificial intelligence-based clinical decision support system that Google and NASA began evaluating in 2025. The technology is designed to help astronauts identify medical problems and make informed treatment decisions without waiting for immediate assistance from Earth.

Robot to handle medical and routine tasks

Beyond healthcare, the proposed robotic assistant is being developed to perform several everyday activities inside spacecraft and future lunar facilities. These include transporting equipment, organising tools, managing inventory and handling routine maintenance work.

For instance, if an astronaut experiences severe back pain, which could indicate kidney stones, the robot may be able to retrieve and prepare an ultrasound machine. This would allow the crew medical officer to concentrate on examining the scan and providing treatment.

The project brings together Google Public Sector, NASA's Human Research Program, the Johnson Space Centre Robotics Team and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

AI models help the robot understand its surroundings

Developing a robot that can safely operate alongside astronauts in confined spacecraft is another major challenge. To address this, researchers are working on spatial awareness and vision-language-action (VLA) models that allow machines to understand their surroundings and respond to human instructions.

During an early laboratory demonstration, the robotic system successfully completed a pick-and-place task involving a medical bag. The open-source Pi0 model, developed by Physical Intelligence using Google Cloud infrastructure, achieved an initial 85% success rate in the test environment.

Google also used its cloud computing infrastructure to train the model before demonstrating that it could operate locally on compact, energy-efficient devices. This is particularly important because future spacecraft cannot depend on continuous connections to Earth-based data centres.

Human supervision remains important

The project is still in the phase of testing and having a robot that can work on its own in space is something that will take a long time to achieve. Scientists hope that the robot will be able to understand voice commands and help with basic health checks taking vital signs and doing ultrasounds while a human is watching.

The technology is not meant to take the place of astronauts or doctors. It could instead offer help with tasks cut down on daily work and let the people, on the mission spend more time doing scientific work.

As NASA prepares for increasingly ambitious lunar and Mars missions, the collaboration could become an important step towards making long-duration human space exploration safer and more sustainable.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kahekashan

[email protected]

Kahekashan is a passionate technophile with a keen eye for cutting-edge gadgets, emerging technologies, and everything in the digital realm. Raised in a Defence family with strong values and a background in literature, she has consistently pursued excellence in every endeavour. Her last full-time assignment involved content writing with the Indian School of Business.

Read More