We could be entering into a renaissance of human spaceflight research, with a record number of ordinary citizens heading into space, and as scientists improve techniques for collecting data on these daring test subjects.
A sign that a renaissance is imminent appeared earlier this week, when the magazine published nature published A cache of papers It details the physical and mental changes that the four-person Inspiration4 crew went through nearly three years ago. That mission, in partnership with SpaceX, was launched on September 15, 2021 and returned to Earth three days later.
During the mission, the crew experienced a wide range of modest molecular changes, dysregulated immune systems, and slight declines in cognitive performance. But the researchers 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 in the first place.
This is a greater achievement than one can realize. The Inspiration4 crew received a lot of training, much of it with SpaceX, which provided the Dragon capsule for their trans-orbital journey. But their preparation is still a far cry from that of NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station, who also regularly perform a battery of health tests on themselves. This includes ultrasounds, cognitive tests, biopsies, blood and saliva testing, skin swabs, and sensory-motor tests.
“You can do research with individuals, and this is the first result in space [of the research]Dr. Dorit Donoville said in a recent interview. Dr. Donoville co-authored one of the papers published in nature He is an associate professor at the Baylor University Center for Space Medicine. She is also the Executive Director of the NASA-funded research consortium, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), which 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, or that we would be able to implement it, or that ordinary people who had never been exposed to scientific research could do something,” she continued, referring to Inspiration4’s mission: “We will actually be able to analyse.”
In some obvious ways, the Inspiration4 crew is far from ordinary: the mission’s leader, Jared Isaacman, is a billionaire who founded a payments processing company when he was 16; Hayley Arsenaux is a physician assistant at the world-renowned St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Sian Proctor is a PhD pilot who teaches geology at the college level. and Christopher Semperowski, a former journeyman in the US Air Force whose long career as an aeronautical engineer led him to his current workplace, Blue Origin.
However, they still come to Inspiration4 as spaceflight newbies. This meant that the TRISH researchers had to come up with a battery of tests that could be performed with minimal training. The Inspiration4 crew also wore Apple Watches, and the capsule was equipped with environmental sensors that researchers were able to correlate with other test results. Dr. Donovel said correlating the data was “extraordinary,” but it gave researchers unique insights into how changes in the confined environment affect things like heart rate or cognitive performance.
In general, researchers are trying to move toward digitizing tests and making the data collection process more passive, to reduce the cognitive burden on the private astronaut. (NASA astronauts also take cognitive tests, but they do so with pencil and paper, Dr. Donoville said.)
Collecting such information will be crucial as more and more ordinary citizens head into space, which seems certain to happen in the next decade. Researchers will be better able to understand the effects of spaceflight on people who do not fit the mold of the typical NASA astronaut: male, white, and in the upper percentiles of physical and cognitive performance. But they will only be able to do so if future space tourists are willing to collect data.
More data means a better understanding of how spaceflight affects women compared to men, or could help future space tourists with pre-existing conditions understand how they would fare in a zero-gravity environment. The Inspiration4 results are promising, especially with regard to space tourism: the TRISH paper found, based on data from that mission, that short-duration missions do not pose significant health risks. This latest preliminary discovery adds to existing data that long periods in space — in this case, 340 days — may not be as dangerous as previously assumed.
So far, commercial providers, from Axiom Space to SpaceX to Blue Origin, have been more willing to work with TRISH, agreeing to standardize and pool data collected on their own missions, Dr. Donoville said.
“They’re all competing for these guys [as customers]“But this allows them to contribute to a common knowledge base,” she added.
This is just the beginning. The rise in the number of non-governmental space missions raises major questions regarding the rules, ethics, and regulation of human research in space. As more citizens head into space than ever before, would they be interested in being guinea pigs in order to advance scientific research? Would a private astronaut paying $50 million for a luxury space tourism experience want to spend his time in orbit performing ultrasounds on himself or accurately measuring temporary cognitive decline?
maybe; Maybe not. Last year, Donoville co-published a book Article in Sciences Calling for, among other things, the development of a set of principles to guide commercial spaceflight missions. One of those principles advocated by the authors is social responsibility—basically the idea that private astronauts have an increased social responsibility to advance this research.
“If you’re going to go into space, you’re riding on the laurels of public funding that enabled you to go into space. The taxpayers paid for all that space capability that has now enabled you to go into space. So you owe it to the taxpayers to research,” Dr. Donoville said. She added that advances in wearable technology have only eased the burden on research participants — not just with the Apple Watch, but with technology like Biometric button device Which constantly collects many vital signs or sweat patch.
“We’re not going to make it miserable for you, we’re not going to prick you with a needle, we’re not going to make you do an ultrasound, but wear the vital button and put on the sweat patch.”