We could be entering a renaissance in human spaceflight research as record numbers of private citizens head into space — and scientists perfect techniques for collecting data on these intrepid test subjects.
A sign that a renaissance is coming came earlier this week when the journal Nature published a collection of papers detailing the physical and mental changes experienced by the four-person crew of Inspiration4 nearly three years ago. This mission, in collaboration with SpaceX, launched on September 15, 2021 and returned to Earth three days later.
During the mission, the crew experienced a wide range of mild molecular changes, dysregulation of the immune system, and mild reductions in cognitive performance. But scientists are only able to analyze the data — more than 100,000 health-related data points — because the four-person crew was able to reliably collect it.
That is more of an accomplishment than one would realize. The Inspiration4 crew received plenty of training, much of it with SpaceX, which provided the Dragon capsule for their ride into orbit. But their training is still a far cry from that of NASA astronauts aboard the ISS, who also undergo a series of health tests on themselves regularly. This includes ultrasounds, cognitive tests, biopsies, blood and saliva testing, skin swabs, and sensorimotor tests.
“You can do research with private individuals in space, that’s the number one outcome [of the research]”said Dr. Dorit Donoviel in a recent interview. Dr. Donoviel is a co-author of one of the papers published in Nature and an adjunct professor at the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor University. She is also the executive director of the NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a research consortium that conducts and funds cutting-edge research to improve human safety in space.
“I’ll be honest, no one was sure that we would be able to collect a reasonable amount of data, that we would be able to implement it, that ordinary people who had never been exposed to scientific research could do anything.” that we could actually analyze,” she continued, referring to the Inspiration4 mission.
In some ways, the Inspiration4 crew is far from ordinary: Mission leader Jared Isaacman is a billionaire who founded a payment processing company when he was 16; Hayley Arcenaux is a physician assistant at the world-renowned Children’s Research Hospital St. Jews; Sian Proctor is a pilot with a PhD who teaches geology at undergraduate level; and Christopher Sembroski is a former US Air Force journeyman whose long career as an aerospace engineer led him to his current workplace, Blue Origin.
And yet they still came to Inspiration4 as spaceflight novices. This meant that the TRISH researchers had to come up with a test kit that could be performed with minimal training. The Inspiration4 crew also wore Apple Watches, and the capsule was equipped with environmental sensors that scientists were able to correlate with the results of other tests. The data correlation is “unusual,” said Dr. But it did give researchers a unique look at how changes in a confined environment affected things like heart rate or cognitive performance, Donoviel said.
Overall, researchers are trying to move toward digitizing testing and making more of the data collection passive to reduce the cognitive overhead of the private astronaut. (NASA astronauts also take cognitive tests, but they do it with pencil and paper, Dr. Donoviel said.)
Gathering such information will be essential as the number of private citizens heading into space grows, as it seems almost certainly poised to do in the coming decade. Researchers will be able to better understand the effects of spaceflight on people who don’t fit the mold of the typical NASA astronaut: male, white, and in the highest percentiles of physical and cognitive performance. But they will only be able to do this if future space tourists are willing to collect data.
More data means a better understanding of how spaceflight affects women versus men, or could help future space tourists with pre-existing conditions understand how they’ll fare in a zero-G environment. The results from Inspiration4 are promising, especially for space tourism: The TRISH paper found that based on data from this mission, short-duration missions do not pose significant health risks. This latest preliminary finding adds to existing data that long-term stays in space – in this case 340 days – may not be as dangerous as once thought.
So far, commercial providers from Axiom Space to SpaceX to Blue Origin have been more than willing to work with TRISH, agreeing to standardize and share data collected on their respective missions, said Dr. Donoviel
“Everyone is competing for these people. [as customers]but this allows them to contribute to a common knowledge base,” she added.
This is just the beginning. The increase in the number of non-governmental space missions raises major questions related to the standards, ethics and regulation of human research in space. While more private citizens than ever are likely heading into space, will they be interested in being guinea pigs to continue scientific research? Will a private astronaut paying $50 million for a luxury space tourism experience want to spend time in orbit performing ultrasounds on himself or carefully measuring temporary cognitive decline?
Maybe; maybe not. Donoviel co-published an article in the journal Science last year that called, among other things, for a set of principles to govern commercial space missions. One of those principles the authors called for is social responsibility—basically, the idea that private astronauts likely have an increased social responsibility to advance this research.
“If you’re going into space, you’re resting on the laurels of all the public funding that made space flight possible. Taxpayers paid for all those space capabilities that now allow you to fly into space. So you owe the taxpayers research,” argued Dr. Donoviel She added that advances in wearable technology have only reduced the burden on research participants — not just with the Apple Watch, but with technology like the Biobutton device, which continuously collects multiple vital signs or sweat stains.
“We’re not going to make you miserable, we’re not going to stick you with a needle, we’re not going to make you do an ultrasound, but we’re going to wear a Biobutton and put on a patch.”