The journey to the space should be an eye-opening experienceone that gives you a new perspective of humanity and its place in the cosmos. But while you might think that an experience like this would make a person infinitely wiser, a new report discovered that space travel can be real make you a little more stupid.
with the latest influx of space-traveling tourists on private missions run by companies such as Blue Origin, scientists have taken the opportunity to see how real people react to time in outer space. Now that billionaires and retired actors are going to space is offering a unique look at how normal bodies react to the pressures of spaceflight instead of astronauts who have been training for their missions in orbit for decades.
now, a new report from New York Times has revealed what that impact looks like, and it doesn’t sound good for anyone hoping to fly into orbit anytime soon. According to a recent study in four private astronauts aboard Inspiration 20214, short time in orbit can affect brain function, your immune system and even your physical condition. like Times explains:
Four people who spent three days outside Earth in September 2021 experienced physical and mental changes that included modest declines in cognitive tests, heightened immune systems and genetic changes within their cells, scientists report in a suite of papers published Tuesday in the journal Nature and some. other related journals.
Almost everything that changed in the astronauts returned to normal after they splashed back to Earth. None of the changes seemed to be of great concern to future space travelers. But the results also highlighted how little medical researchers know.
Christopher Mason, a professor of genomics, physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and one of the leaders of the research, called the collection of documents and data “the most in-depth examination we’ve ever had of a crew.”, as he said during a press conference on Monday.
The four people selected to represent a “wider part of society” include billionaire Jared Isaacman, who led the mission; Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant; Sian Proctor, a community college professor; and Christopher Sembroski, an engineer. However, the researchers anonymized each person’s data from the Inspiration4 mission.
through their journey into spaceas well as collection and in the days following their flight, participants provided the researchers with everything from blood and urine samples to cognitive data collected using specially designed tasks.
Research that analyzed the data collected found that kidney function was affected by time in space, making kidney stones slightly more likely to form, and genetic markers that indicate age were also magnified, meaning you look genetically younger in spaceaccording to a paper published by Nature. The team also looked at the crew’s ability to focus and maintain attention while in space. like Times adds:
Astronauts took several tests on iPads to measure their cognitive performance in space. One test assessed what is known as psychomotor alertness, a measure of the ability to focus on a task and sustain attention. The astronaut looked at a box on the screen. A stopwatch then suddenly appeared inside the box, counting the time until a button was pressed.
If the response was too slow, longer than 355 milliseconds, this was considered a lack of attention. On average, performance in space dropped compared to when Inspiration4 astronauts did the same test on Earth. Other tests show deficits in visual search and working memory.
The test found that the astronaut’s response time dropped in space, but the researchers admitted that this could also be because the participants were distracted by the vastness of the cosmos.
Despite the study’s limited sample size, such research will be important as more and more people travel into orbit in the coming years. Can I help you the mission is like NASA’s Artemis program develop alerts and control manuals for anyone in orbit and may affect the route next generation space stations are designed.