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Spaceflight in the shuttle era and beyond : redefining humanity's purpose in space
An exploration of the changing conceptions of the iconic Space Shuttle and a call for a new vision of spaceflight. The thirty years of Space Shuttle flights saw contrary changes in American visions of space. Valerie Neal, who has spent much of her career examining the Space Shuttle program, uses this iconic vehicle to question over four decades' worth of thinking about, and struggling with, the meaning of human spaceflight. She examines the ideas, images, and icons that emerged as NASA, Congress, journalists, and others sought to communicate rationales for, or critiques of, the Space Shuttle missions. At times concurrently, the Space Shuttle was billed as delivery truck and orbiting science lab, near-Earth station and space explorer, costly disaster and pinnacle of engineering success. The book's multidisciplinary approach reveals these competing depictions to examine the meaning of the spaceflight enterprise. Given the end of the Space Shuttle flights in 2011, Neal makes an appeal to reframe spaceflight once again to propel humanity forward.
Book
The NASA Twins Study: A multidimensional analysis of a year-long human spaceflight
To understand the health impact of long-duration spaceflight, one identical twin astronaut was monitored before, during, and after a 1-year mission onboard the International Space Station; his twin served as a genetically matched ground control. Longitudinal assessments identified spaceflight-specific changes, including decreased body mass, telomere elongation, genome instability, carotid artery distension and increased intima-media thickness, altered ocular structure, transcriptional and metabolic changes, DNA methylation changes in immune and oxidative stress-related pathways, gastrointestinal microbiota alterations, and some cognitive decline postflight. Although average telomere length, global gene expression, and microbiome changes returned to near preflight levels within 6 months after return to Earth, increased numbers of short telomeres were observed and expression of some genes was still disrupted. These multiomic, molecular, physiological, and behavioral datasets provide a valuable roadmap of the putative health risks for future human spaceflight.
Journal Article
Space radiation measurements during the Artemis I lunar mission
Space radiation is a notable hazard for long-duration human spaceflight
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. Associated risks include cancer, cataracts, degenerative diseases
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and tissue reactions from large, acute exposures
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. Space radiation originates from diverse sources, including galactic cosmic rays
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, trapped-particle (Van Allen) belts
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and solar-particle events
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. Previous radiation data are from the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle in low-Earth orbit protected by heavy shielding and Earth’s magnetic field
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,
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and lightly shielded interplanetary robotic probes such as Mars Science Laboratory and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
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,
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. Limited data from the Apollo missions
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–
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and ground measurements with substantial caveats are also available
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. Here we report radiation measurements from the heavily shielded Orion spacecraft on the uncrewed Artemis I lunar mission. At differing shielding locations inside the vehicle, a fourfold difference in dose rates was observed during proton-belt passes that are similar to large, reference solar-particle events. Interplanetary cosmic-ray dose equivalent rates in Orion were as much as 60% lower than previous observations
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. Furthermore, a change in orientation of the spacecraft during the proton-belt transit resulted in a reduction of radiation dose rates of around 50%. These measurements validate the Orion for future crewed exploration and inform future human spaceflight mission design.
Measurements from the heavily shielded Orion spacecraft during the uncrewed Artemis I mission show dose-rate reductions due to shielding and orientation for Van Allen belt crossings and quantify the interplanetary cosmic-ray radiation in a human-rated spacecraft.
Journal Article
Dreams of other worlds : the amazing story of unmanned space exploration
Dreams of Other Worlds describes the unmanned space missions that have opened new windows on distant worlds. Spanning four decades of dramatic advances in astronomy and planetary science, Impey and Henry tell the story of eleven iconic exploratory missions and how they have fundamentally transformed our scientific and cultural perspectives on the universe and our place in it.
Book
Explore space using swarms of tiny satellites
Sand-grain-sized computers, self-healing materials and constellations of craft would reboot our reach, explain Igor Levchenko, Michael Keidar and colleagues.
Sand-grain-sized computers, self-healing materials and constellations of craft would reboot our reach.
Journal Article
A second space age spanning omics, platforms and medicine across orbits
The recent acceleration of commercial, private and multi-national spaceflight has created an unprecedented level of activity in low Earth orbit, concomitant with the largest-ever number of crewed missions entering space and preparations for exploration-class (lasting longer than one year) missions. Such rapid advancement into space from many new companies, countries and space-related entities has enabled a ‘second space age’. This era is also poised to leverage, for the first time, modern tools and methods of molecular biology and precision medicine, thus enabling precision aerospace medicine for the crews. The applications of these biomedical technologies and algorithms are diverse, and encompass multi-omic, single-cell and spatial biology tools to investigate human and microbial responses to spaceflight. Additionally, they extend to the development of new imaging techniques, real-time cognitive assessments, physiological monitoring and personalized risk profiles tailored for astronauts. Furthermore, these technologies enable advancements in pharmacogenomics, as well as the identification of novel spaceflight biomarkers and the development of corresponding countermeasures. In this Perspective, we highlight some of the recent biomedical research from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, European Space Agency and other space agencies, and detail the entrance of the commercial spaceflight sector (including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom and Sierra Space) into aerospace medicine and space biology, the first aerospace medicine biobank, and various upcoming missions that will utilize these tools to ensure a permanent human presence beyond low Earth orbit, venturing out to other planets and moons.
The current ‘second space age’ has enabled multiple studies on the effects of spaceflight on human physiology and health, which are contributing to the development of measures that will be needed to maintain astronaut health in future space missions.
Journal Article
Space blog
Take a trip to outer space! Watch out for huge yellow clouds filled with acid, solar gas explosions, giant flying snowballs made of ice. Join these astronauts on a daring and dangerous adventure through space.
Book
Molecular and physiological changes in the SpaceX Inspiration4 civilian crew
Human spaceflight has historically been managed by government agencies, such as in the NASA Twins Study
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, but new commercial spaceflight opportunities have opened spaceflight to a broader population. In 2021, the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission launched the first all-civilian crew to low Earth orbit, which included the youngest American astronaut (aged 29), new in-flight experimental technologies (handheld ultrasound imaging, smartwatch wearables and immune profiling), ocular alignment measurements and new protocols for in-depth, multi-omic molecular and cellular profiling. Here we report the primary findings from the 3-day spaceflight mission, which induced a broad range of physiological and stress responses, neurovestibular changes indexed by ocular misalignment, and altered neurocognitive functioning, some of which match those of long-term spaceflight
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, but almost all of which did not differ from baseline (pre-flight) after return to Earth. Overall, these preliminary civilian spaceflight data suggest that short-duration missions do not pose a significant health risk, and moreover present a rich opportunity to measure the earliest phases of adaptation to spaceflight in the human body at anatomical, cellular, physiological and cognitive levels. Finally, these methods and results lay the foundation for an open, rapidly expanding biomedical database for astronauts
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, which can inform countermeasure development for both private and government-sponsored space missions.
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission sent an all-civilian crew into orbit to study physiological, neurovestibular and neurocognitive changes in the astronauts and found that short-duration civilian space missions do not pose a major health risk.
Journal Article