Astronauts, like elite athletes, need to execute complex tasks under the most demanding conditions. Both can see their performance suffer if they fail to get a good night’s sleep. But there’s one big difference—there’s a lot more at stake in the harsh environment of space.

“If a football player drops a catch, all it means is that his team might not get the first down,” says Josh Arceneaux, director of human spaceflight at Booz Allen. “But if an astronaut misses something, you might just lose a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment. Or worse.”

That’s why Booz Allen partnered with Axiom Space, a Houston-based company, and Oura, the maker of wearable smart rings, to build and test technology that tracks biometric data like sleep quality, heart rate, and respiratory rate in space. The objective: give astronauts a better understanding of their own bodies without having to contact Mission Control.

The human spaceflight community knows that long spaceflights can disrupt humans’ natural sleep cycles. And the hazards of sleep disruption include a range of health problems, metabolic disorders, and fatigue-induced errors. The problem could be particularly acute for the crew of the International Space Station, who can experience up to 16 sunrises a day.

By collecting data on total sleep time and heart rate variability through the Oura Ring, astronauts have access to information that helps them determine whether they are well-rested and ready to perform, which helps them better gauge when to push forward and when to step back.

Adapting off-the-shelf products, like the Oura Ring, for mission-specific tasks is significantly less expensive than building a new tool from scratch. It also allows NASA to tap into the private sector’s innovative power and import cutting-edge products from advanced technology companies into the most dangerous environments.

But making Oura rings work in space, where internet connectivity is iffy and power sources are limited, is tricky work. Booz Allen’s engineering team collaborated with Oura to modify the ring’s middleware so that it could send data to a disconnected cloud device on board the International Space Station instead of Oura’s servers on the ground. Booz Allen also developed custom software to collect, analyze, and deliver easy-to-understand performance insights directly to astronauts, enabling them to assess their performance readiness without relying on ground support.

Re-engineering technology so that it allows astronauts to access critical data without needing to contact Mission Control advances America’s goal to send astronauts to the Moon and eventually Mars, where they’ll need to make quick decisions without relying on instructions from back on Earth. Mars is much farther from Earth than the Moon—an average of 140 million miles compared to 240,000 miles for the Moon—meaning it takes far longer for radio signals to travel there and back. Once on Mars, astronauts would need to wait up to 22 minutes, depending on orbital alignments, just for a signal to reach Earth. They would then wait the same amount of time for a return signal. Such delays are not acceptable in mission-critical situations.

In that kind of environment, astronauts will have to rely on their own data and conclusions to guide mission-critical decisions. That’s why easy-to-use tech that delivers real-time insights isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential.

“We’ve proven that you don’t need a constant connection to Earth to give astronauts real-time insights,” says Karen Fields, a senior leader in Booz Allen’s space business.

“That’s a huge step for deep space exploration.”

By partnering with Oura on this project, the Booz Allen team was able to improve commercially available technology at the pace of industry rather than the pace of government.

“This project shows that we can use commercial tech without spending the typical number of hours and dollars getting it space ready,” Fields says. 

Looking ahead, the team plans to expand beyond the Oura Ring to test a broader range of wearable devices and connect them to a Booz Allen data hub that can integrate multiple sources of biometric data and function in similarly disconnected environments.

“If we can make this technology work in space—the ultimate edge environment—then we can apply it in any setting with limited infrastructure, from mountaintops to warzones,” says Arceneaux.