With the wealth of knowledge provided by both historical and continuing research and development onboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA is paving a path through space. Our nation’s space agency collaborates with many international agencies through the program including ESA, CSA and JAXA.
During yesterday’s ISS Research & Development Conference, many of the topics that arose have implications to future human deep space exploration missions.
Onboard the ISS, astronauts have eaten romaine lettuce grown in the microgravity environment of the orbiting laboratory. Further growth of the capability to provide food grown in space to humans will greatly benefit long-duration expeditions into deep space.
The expandable module currently being demonstrated on the ISS for two years is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM. It is being evaluated to assess its capacity to protect against temperature extremes, solar radiation and space debris. Understanding how the module protects against these factors is an important step in evaluating the ability of expandable modules to perform on future missions in harsh deep space environments.
Keeping humans healthy on future missions into deep space requires advanced medical monitoring and interpretation of the information collected on astronaut health and actions to treat health challenges.
New compact and lightweight exercise equipment is being developed in addition to small, inexpensive and portable medical devices. During his talk at the conference, Dr. Eric Topol showed the audience a small device that can accurately image the heart by simply applying it to the body with some gel, plugging it into a smartphone and opening an app. It allows the user to track blood flow and to see every part of the heart including thin valves and the size of heart chambers in just a few seconds. The ability to remotely examine the human body in this way will be critical to maintaining astronaut health on deep space missions.
Onboard the ISS, research is being conducted in many areas that include astronaut sleep, exercise and vision. It’s essential to understand how spaceflight affects humans in these areas and more in order to effectively plan for successful future manned missions to deep space destinations that include Mars.
Learn more about the ISS at NASA.gov.