NASA twin astronauts study finds no flashing red lights for long spaceflight

Source: Washington Post

NASA twin astronauts study finds no flashing red lights for long spaceflight

By Joel Achenbach February 15 at 1:38 PM

Long-duration spaceflight does weird things to the human body, even at the molecular level, but so far there’s no reason to think humans couldn’t survive a two-and-a-half-year round-trip journey to Mars. That was the bottom-line message Friday from a NASA official and two scientists as they revealed more results from the agency’s “Twins Study,” which examined physiological changes in astronaut Scott Kelly during his nearly year-long sojourn in space while his twin brother, Mark Kelly, stayed on Earth.

The full report has not yet been published, but reporters got a summary at a news conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Washington. Among the highlights: Scott Kelly’s bloodwork showed that his immune system quickly ramped up when he went into space, as if, at the cellular level, his body felt under attack.

“It’s almost as if the body’s on high alert,” said Christopher Mason, associate professor of computational genomics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Some of the physiological effects of microgravity have long been known, such as impaired vision, bone loss, muscle loss and disruption to the wake-sleep cycle. The new research shows changes at the cellular level, including changes in gene expression.

“It’s mostly really good news,” Mason said. “The body has extraordinary plasticity and adaptation to being in zero gravity, at least for a year.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/02/15/nasa-twin-astronauts-study-finds-no-flashing-red-lights-long-spaceflight/

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Alternate link: https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-announced-more-strange-results-from-its-ambitious-twin-study