Space will change you even during short trips off the planet.
Four people who spent three days outside Earth in September 2021 experienced physical and mental changes that included a slight decline in cognitive tests, a stressed immune system and genetic changes in their cells, researchers report in a package of papers published Tuesday in the journal Nature and several others . other related magazines.
Almost everything that changed in the astronauts returned to normal after they hit Earth. None of the changes appear to be a startling warning to future space travelers. But the results also showed how little medical scientists know.
Christopher Mason, a professor of genomics, physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and one of the leaders of the research, called the collection of documents and data “the deepest we’ve ever had on the crew. “, as he spoke at Monday’s press conference.
The four astronauts traveled on a mission known as Inspiration4, the first trip to orbit where none of the crew members were professional astronauts. The mission was led by Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman. Instead of taking friends with him, he recruited three travelers who represented a broader section of society: Hayley Arceneaux, a medical assistant who survived childhood cancer; Sian Proctor, a community college professor who teaches geoscience; and Christopher Sembroski, engineer.
Inspiration4 crew members agreed to participate in medical experiments — taking blood, urine, feces and saliva samples during flight — and to allow the data to be cataloged in an online archive known as the Space Omics and Medical Atlas, or SOMA, which is publicly available.
Although the data is anonymous, it does not provide much privacy as there were only four crew members on the Inspiration4. “You could probably figure out who is who,” said Dr. Proctor in an interview.
But she added, “I just feel there’s more good than harm that comes from being able to share my information and for science to move forward and learn.”
SOMA also includes data from other people who flew on private space missions, as well as Japanese astronauts who flew on the International Space Station, and a study that compared the health of Scott Kelly, a NASA astronaut who lived on the International Space Station. for 340 days in 2015 and 2016 with his twin brother Mark, a former astronaut who is now a senator representing Arizona.
As more private citizens buy their way to space, the hope is that SOMA will quickly fill in more information about a wider range of people than the older white men who were selected as astronauts in the early decades of the space age. This could lead to treatments tailored to individual astronauts to combat the effects of spaceflight.
The amount of information also allowed scientists to compare short-term effects with what happens during longer missions.
During Mr Kelly’s year in space, the age markers in his DNA known as telomeres lengthened – surprisingly suggesting he had become biologically younger. But the telomeres mostly returned to their former size after he returned to Earth, although some ended up even shorter than before he left. Scientists interpreted this as a sign of accelerated aging.
The telomeres of all four Inspiration4 astronauts also lengthened and then shortened, suggesting that the changes are occurring in all astronauts and that they are occurring rapidly.
“In many ways, this is a remarkable finding,” said Susan Bailey, a professor of radiation cancer biology and oncology at Colorado State University who led the telomere research.
Cells use RNA, a single-stranded chain of nucleic acids, to translate blueprints encoded in DNA into protein production. Dr. Bailey said the RNA corresponding to telomeres also changed in astronauts and that similar changes were seen in people climbing Mount Everest.
“Which is a strange connection,” she said.
This suggests that the cause of growing and shrinking telomeres is not weightlessness, but rather the radiation bombardment that humans experience at high altitudes and in space.
This was not the only effect of space flight.
Afshin Beheshti of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California pointed to molecular changes in the astronauts’ kidneys that could indicate the formation of kidney stones. This wouldn’t be a problem during a three-day trip into space, but it could become a health crisis during a longer mission.
“Halfway to Mars, how are you going to deal with that?” said Dr. Beheshti.
But now that this possibility is known, scientists could study how to prevent kidney stones or develop better methods of treating them.
Astronauts performed 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 stared at the box on the screen. A stopwatch suddenly appeared in the box, counting the time until the button was pressed.
If the response was too slow, longer than 355 milliseconds, it was considered a lapse of attention. On average, performance in space decreased compared to when Inspiration4 astronauts completed the same test on the ground. Other tests indicate deficits in visual search and working memory.
“Our cognitive abilities were not affected in space, but our speed response was slower,” Ms. Arcenaux said in an email. “That surprised me.
But Dr. Proctor said it may not have been an actual difference in their ability to perform tasks in space, just that they could be distracted. “It’s not because you don’t have the ability to do better on the test,” she said. “It’s just because you look up for a minute and there’s Earth outside the window and you’re like, ‘Wow.’
One of the advantages of collecting all the data is to look for connections between changes, which was difficult for scientists with earlier narrower data sets. “When you look at it as a whole, you start to see the pieces of the puzzle come together,” said Dr. Beheshti.
That could point to a common cause, “and then countermeasures are easy to target,” he said.
Since returning to Earth, life for some of the Inspiration4 astronauts has in many ways returned to the way it was before they left for space. Ms. Arcenaux returned to working 12-hour shifts as a physician assistant at St. Mary’s Children’s Research Hospital. Jude in Memphis. Dr. Proctor is still a community college professor. Mr. Sembroski, who lives near Seattle, now works as an engineer at Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos.
But Dr. Proctor is also now a science envoy for the United States Department of State. This week he visits Peru and Chile and talks about his experiences in schools and universities. “Now I also have this kind of global platform where I can go and do things like inspire and help prepare the next generation,” she said.
Ms Arcenaux said she remembers looking at Earth from the dome window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on the second day of her journey.
“I feel so connected to my fellow Earthlings,” she said. “We are all one on this beautiful planet.
As for Mr. Isaacman, he’s not done with space yet. He and three other non-professional astronauts will embark on a mission called Polaris Dawn, which may take off next month. During this flight, again in the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Mr. Isaacman and another crew member plan to attempt the first private spacewalk.