Flight Surgeon Natacha Chough, MD, MPH, provides expertise and support to NASA Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson. Photo courtesy of NASA.
By Melissa F. Priebe, CLASP
The University of Michigan Space Institute welcomed its first seminar speaker to Ann Arbor, Michigan during the 2024-2025 academic year to present “Caring for Astronauts, One Mission At a Time.” An alumna of the University of Michigan Medical School, Dr. Natacha Chough spoke about her role as a NASA Flight Surgeon for an audience of students, alumni and guests. Chough, MD, MPH, is a physician who has obtained specialized training and board certification working in Aerospace Medicine, in order to provide training and medical support to astronaut crews before they embark on human spaceflight.
“In 60 plus years of human spaceflight, we’ve never had to bring crew home early because of a medical reason,” said Chough. “That’s a pretty cool metric.”
Given the significant investment in training and preparation for missions, it is critical that flight crew members are kept as healthy as possible. According to NASA, a special doctor called a ‘Flight surgeon’ is assigned to each crew once the astronauts are assigned to a mission. Flight surgeons oversee the health care and medical training while astronauts prepare for their mission, and they also take care of any medical issues that arise before, during, or after spaceflight.
During a mission, flight surgeons work the console in the NASA Mission Control Center under the call sign ‘Surgeon’ and hold weekly private medical conferences with the astronauts. Flight surgeons do not report details of the conferences back to Mission Control, however, if they learn something that could affect the mission, they inform the flight director.
During her seminar, Chough shared photographs and stories that demonstrated how hard the medical crew will work to get each crew of astronauts across the finish line safely.
“We invest in this crew, they are trained, and we want to keep them flying for the duration of their careers to the extent that we can,” said Chough, during the event. The seminar luncheon was held in the Climate and Space Research Building at the University of Michigan on November 22, 2024.
Chough also described the types of training, fitness regimens, and medical testing that physicians bring to astronauts before their shuttles launch into space. She explained how the field of space medicine is constantly evolving and illustrated how specialties in a broad range of human health can benefit those working in the field. Advancements in research about humans in space and the way humans work in space have led to better outcomes for many crew members.
“We now have folks coming home from six months in space with no body mass loss, very minimal decrease in strength, and who tend to maintain the vast majority of their bone mineral density.
Chough’s path to becoming a NASA Flight Surgeon began after she graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in biology. She interned and worked at various NASA centers in life sciences and served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer prior to obtaining her M.D. at the University of Michigan. After medical school, she completed an Emergency Medicine Residency at Stanford University, followed by an Aerospace Medicine Residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch in 2015, and she is now board-certified in both specialties.
She works at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as a Flight Surgeon, the ground physician who cares for astronauts before, during, and after their spaceflights. Chough has served as the Flight Surgeon for at least four prior missions to the International Space Station (ISS), including Axiom-1, the first all-private astronaut crew to visit the orbital laboratory. She also works a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Read more about Chough’s background at the University of Michigan.