Effects Of Long Term Space Flight And Microgravity

Our bodies are not built for space. The exposure to radiation can cause cataracts, brain damage, and cancer. Weightlessness can cause muscle mass loss, bone mass loss, and bad circulation. Author of "Humans may dream of traveling to Mars, but our bodies aren't built for it," Charles Wohlforth and Amanda Hendrix explains "Doctor-astronauts working on the International Space Station in 2009 also discovered that living in weightlessness can damage the optic nerve. In the absence of gravity, cerebral-spinal fluid stops circulating. On voyages of more than a year, that could lead to blindness or contribute to dementia," [3]. This is a big problem when it comes to space travel, and should be NASA's biggest priority.

While this is a deeply rooted concern for NASA, the organization plans to make progress in making human space travel safe and productive. In 2016, Former President Barack Obama wrote an article on CNN’s wire service with gargantuan hopes for the future generations of space travel to develop in the future. In the article entitled, “ America Will Take the Giant Leap to Mars”, Obama proposes that the United States will be capable of sending astronauts to Mars by the year 2030. To support his statement, he comments, “I’m excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space”(Obama 1). Here, Obama is acknowledging the fact that astronauts have been, and are, affected by radiation and loss of gravity when exposed to “deep space” for long periods of time. He is also revealing that through years of research and development, the government is prepared to safely send America’s astronauts to other planets for the purpose of exploration and advances in many technological fields. Yes, astronauts’ health

Space is one of the most researched and government funded fields internationally. Globally, researchers have been attempting to discover more about the universe far before Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957. NASA has launched over 100 flights to space, but one of the most recent flights is Expedition 47. This team has gone to microgravity to investigate spaceflight’s effect on the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neurovestibular systems in the human body. The crew members are also trying to discover how to make the workout equipment more practical and create more room for future space crews during long-duration missions. The Expedition 47 began on March 1, 2016 and will end on June 5, 2016. This three month long research expedition

It has become such an iconic idea, that most if not all children in the last 60 years have thought that they would be alive to see the expedition, if not be part of it themselves. Of course, space travel is not a simple there and back scenario. As seen in the American Apollo program, there are many places throughout a mission where things can and most defiantly will go wrong with technology. In addition, there are inevitably even more challenging obstacles for a mission to face once they get into space. These challenges include loss of muscle, bone, and suppression of the human immune systems and over time we have found that these bodily effects seem to become progressively worse the longer an astronaut travels through space. Before we even begin discussing when we should attempt land manned space missions on other planets, we need a better understanding of the effect of long term space travel and occur in the first place and find ways to combat them so that prolonged space travel is not destructive to the human

How long would a “long term” space flight be? According to our records, the longest that human has been off Earth is almost 438 days, and it is the mission operated by Russian space station Mir. (Beings not Made for Space, Kenneth Chang, 2014) Long-term space flight requests that astronauts have to be exposed to the real space environment, which includes microgravity, the significant increase in radiation, variation in temperature and space view. The major impacts that I will be talking about are microgravity and space radiation. Due to these changes of space environment from that of the Earth, astronauts will face the changes on their body and health, some of the changes would be negative. For example, astronauts will see the significant changes in their body; their whole bodies will expand, the mass of their bones and muscles would lose, and some of them might have farsighted eyes. There will also be increase in risk of Alzheimer’s disease, damage in immune system and destroys of microbiomes. To build a better space environment, scientists have been working hard to find out what is causing the health issues and ways to solve them. They have done well-known researches such as “Twins Study” between Mark and Kelly Scott. The latest technology that involved is called artificial gravity; it is considered desirable for long-term space flight as well as human habitat in space.

Our knowledge of the long term space flight's effects on the human body is still limited, but we do have quite a bit of research done on the short term effects, which is necessary to know before considering the long term effects. These effects include but are not limited to blood

The effects of travelling in space on the human body is a subject that is currently being researched increasingly in-depth, with many unanswered questions. There is little data on long term exposure to conditions in space, and a limited range of data based on the restraints of which demographics have been exposed

Like said before, Mars is called the Red Planet because of its color and that is because of its iron-rich minerals in the loose dust and rock covering its surface. NASA thinks that the iron minerals oxidize or rust, causing the soil to look red. The atmosphere on Mars is cold and thin which means that liquid water cannot exist (at this time) for any length of time. Mars also has the largest volcano in the solar system including Olympus Mons which is about 370 miles in diameter. Many of the regions on Mars are flat, low-lying plains. There is no exact number of craters on mars and it varies from place to place, depending on how old the surface is. Evidently, Mars is not like Earth.

At the moment, astronauts’ next goal in manned missions is to try to figure out the most efficient and safe way in succeeding in a manned mission to Mars. However, in order to achieve such a mission, astronauts must completely understand the additional perils that accompany adventures into space of the length that would be required for such a trip. With experiments that have been completed and are in the process of being done, scientists are able to better understand the many risks that contribute to the danger of such prolonged missions, in hope of finding solutions that will make a mission to Mars possible. Although there are many risks that a human will take when remaining in space for such a long period of time, this paper will

In the first place, when you go to space it bothers your body. It makes you have high energy radiation which could lead to more dangerous things. It could also

A problematic issue is the matter of body mass or more specifically the bone density in space. Of course, space is bound to bring changes to the body and

Space programs have implanted exercise programs and diets for Astronauts to help deal with the effects of living in space.

There are the obvious dangers of outer space: the high-energy radiation, the lack of pressure in the vacuum and the severely low temperatures. These cause an abrupt death when encountered. However, there are other lethal repercussions that can leave a heavy toll on the body with much more gradual yet deleterious symptoms that have the potential to linger long after the trip. Some of these issues are the loss of muscle mass, bone microfractures and the reduction to the immune system. Because these problems cannot be solved by our current technology, astronauts must undergo safety measures that help combat these

I am writing this letter to you to assess the pros and cons of interplanetory space travel. Should we send humans to Mars? Is it right? Is it really ethical to put fourth human missions to this inhospital planet? YES! In this letter I will be arguing the pros of why we should say YES to the next step forward in humanity. I hope that after reading this it will assist your thoughts and consideration of human interplanetory space travel.

A team of psychologists at Moscow's Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) wanted to learn more about the dynamics of long-term isolation in space. This knowledge would be applied to the International Space Station, a joint project of several countries that would send people into space for more than six months. It would eventually include a trip to Mars taking up to three years.