Wearable monitoring: A project for the unobtrusive investigation of sleep physiology aboard the International Space Station

Several aspects of sleep physiology in microgravity are still unclear, including the determinants of the poor sleep quality often reported by the astronauts during space missions. In addition, simple and unobtrusive monitoring devices for the data collection are needed for sleep studies in microgravity to facilitate the experiment setup, and to interfere as less as possible with the sleep comfort. The Wearable Mmonitoring experiment is part of the Futura Mission of the Italian Space Agency and aims to 1) validate the applicability of a new smart garment (MagIC-Space) for the monitoring of vital signs during spaceflights; and 2) by using this device, monitor astronaut´s autonomic nervous control, heart electrical and mechanical activity, skin temperature and breathing patterns during sleep in microgravity. One astronaut was recruited and seven inflight sleep recordings were made aboard the International Space Station from January till June 2015. Two preflight and two postflight reference sleep recordings were also done on Earth. The first objective of the project has been successfully achieved, in that the smart garment allowed all recordings to be made as planned and provided signals of good quality (~98% of the recorded data is available for the subsequent analyses). With regard to the second objective, the data analysis is in progress.