Asgardia Space News 7/27/2018
NASA performed a study on twins where one twin was sent into space and the other remained down on Earth for one year. That study just hit another major benchmark now that the early findings from 2017 have been confirmed along with some new insights into possible health issues for future Mars travellers.
Asgardia, the first-ever space nation open to all, has the long-term goal of setting up habitable platforms in space. Thus, health issues are an important of meeting that goal.
Here is an overview of some of the key new findings:
Scott’s telomeres — or the ends of chromosomes that shorten as people get older — got a lot longer in space. This result was known last year, but investigators validated it and also found that most of the telomeres got shorter again within two days of Scott’s landing.
Approximately 7 percent of Scott’s genes may have longer-term changes in expression after spaceflight, in areas like DNA repair, the immune system, how bones are formed, hypoxia (an oxygen deficiency in the tissues) and hypercapnia (excessive carbon dioxide in the bloodstream). The other 93 percent of his genes rapidly returned to normal.
There was no significant cognitive performance decline for Scott in space after one year, compared with Mark or with usual astronauts who fly a six-month mission. Yet, researchers did see pronounced decreases in Scott’s cognitive speed and accuracy after he landed. This might have happened due to “re-exposure and adjustment to Earth’s gravity, and the busy schedule that came along with Scott’s return to Earth explained NASA officials.
The researchers also observed that spaceflight is connected to nutrient shifts, oxygen deprivation stress and more inflammation. They collected the evidence after looking at large numbers of proteins (chains of amino acids), cytokines (substances secreted by cells in the immune system) and metabolites (substances related to metabolism) in Scott’s body.
More:
https://asgardiaspacenews.com/nasas-twin-study/
