Even Short Trips to Space can Change an Astronaut’s Biology

  • 📰 DiscoverMag
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 59 sec. here
  • 2 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 27%
  • Publisher: 53%

Health Health Headlines News

Health Health Latest News,Health Health Headlines

A new set of studies offers the most comprehensive look at spaceflight health since NASA’s Twins Study.

Today, with private, commercial and multinational spaceflight providers and flyers entering the market, we are witnessing a new era of human spaceflight. Missions have ranged from minutes, hours and days to months.over the coming decade, space exploration missions will be much longer, with many more space travelers and even space tourists.

NASA selected astronaut Scott Kelly for the agency’s first one-year mission, during which he spent a year on board the International Space Station from 2015 into 2016. Over the same time period, his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and current U.S. senator representing Arizona, remained on Earth.collected from the twin in space and his genetically matched twin back on Earth before, during and after spaceflight.

As you get older, your telomeres shorten because of a variety of factors, including stress. The length of your telomeres can, my team studied a cohort of 10 astronauts on six-month missions on board the International Space Station. We also had a control group of age- and sex-matched participants who stayed on the ground.

What’s particularly interesting about these findings is that the Inspiration4 mission lasted only three days. So, not only do scientists now have consistent and reproducible data on telomeres’ response to spaceflight, but we also know it happens quickly. These results suggest that even short trips, like a weekend getaway to space, will be associated with changes in telomere length.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 459. in HEALTH

Health Health Latest News, Health Health Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Data from Inspiration4 astronauts suggests short space trips aren’t harmful to healthNew research that was conducted on the four civilian astronauts of the Inspiration4 mission shows the effects of short-duration spaceflight on the human body.
Source: DigitalTrends - 🏆 95. / 65 Read more »