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Moree-based SpacePort Australia (SPA) and Houston-based Aexa Aerospace have formalised a joint venture to develop what they describe as the world's first deductive medical AI designed to assist, support and treat spacecraft and station crew.
The partnership, dubbed The Hamilton Project, is named after NASA flight surgeon Dr Douglas Hamilton, who served across 50 missions.
The project aims to build an AI model capable of functioning as a medical resource for crew operating in environments where real-time access to physicians on Earth is limited or impossible, such as deep-space missions or orbital stations.
SPA founder Dr Gabrielle Caswell says the venture draws on Australia's long history of delivering healthcare across vast distances and her own career in the field of remote medicine over 20 years.
“Rural general practitioners in Australia practice ‘pre-cradle to grave’ medicine, including areas considered sub-specialities in most western countries: OBYN, paediatrics, trauma management, anaesthetics, general surgery, mental health and geriatrics,” says Caswell.
“This broad clinical skill set encompasses all stages and phases of human life. And importantly practitioners are also trained in the management of severe trauma.
"It is anticipated that doctors and medical staff will become embedded into missions, and all these skills will be required over time, to create successful space economic zones.”
Aexa Aerospace founder and CEO Dr Fernando De La Peña Llaca says the AI model is "paving the way for future autonomous attending" in space, building on his company's existing work developing holographic medical devices that have been trialled aboard the International Space Station.
De La Peña Llaca created the holographic medical devices to allow doctors to examine "patients" remotely and this collaboration is set to expand the technology by bringing together Aexa Aerospace’s AI technology with the SPA team’s practical medical knowledge and clinical experience.
The joint venture has recruited Dr Mina Arsanious from the UK and Dr Mark Bienoki from Canada as project managers.
The Hamilton Project is the second major international partnership for SPA in as many years.
In October 2024, SPA signed a memorandum of understanding with US-based Titans Space Development Corporation to explore Australian launch sites for reusable spaceplanes.
That partnership is backed by US$100 million ($155 million) in funding from NSL & Co. LLC, which acquired a 5 per cent stake in Titans Space to support the initiative.
SPA operates from Moree in northern NSW and positions itself as a facilitator of space industry development in regional Australia, with a focus on leveraging the country's remote geography for launch, training and research applications.
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