We’re about to learn a lot more about how the human body responds to space

We could also be entering a renaissance in human spaceflight research as record numbers of personal residents enterprise into space and scientists improve techniques for collecting data on these intrepid test subjects.

An indication that a renaissance is at hand got here earlier this week when a paper appeared in the journal Nature collection of papers detailing the physical and mental changes the four-person Inspiration4 crew experienced almost three years ago. This mission, in cooperation with SpaceX, launched on September 15, 2021 and returned to Earth three days later.

During the mission, the crew experienced a broad set of moderate molecular changes, immune system dysregulation, and mild declines in cognitive performance. But researchers are only able to analyze the data – more than 100,000 health-related data points – because the four-person crew was able to reliably collect it.

This is a larger achievement than you would possibly think. The Inspiration4 crew underwent extensive training, largely thanks to SpaceX, which provided them with a Dragon capsule for the flight to orbit. However, their preparation still differs from that of NASA astronauts aboard the ISS, who also repeatedly perform a variety of health tests on themselves. This includes ultrasounds, cognitive tests, biopsies, blood and saliva tests, skin swabs and sensorimotor tests.

“You can conduct research in space with private participation and that is the number one (research) result,” Dr. Dorit Donoviel said in a recent interview. Dr. Donoviel is a co-author of a paper published in the journal Nature and an associate professor at the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor University. He can be executive director of the NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), which conducts and funds cutting-edge research to improve human safety in space.

“I’ll be honest, no one was sure whether we would be able to collect a reasonable amount of data, whether we would be able to implement it, whether ordinary people who had never had any contact with scientific research would be able to do something that we would actually be able to analyze” – she continued, referring to the Inspiration4 mission.

In some obvious ways, the Inspiration4 crew is anything but strange: the mission’s leader, Jared Isaacman, is a billionaire who began a payment processing company at age 16; Hayley Arcenaux is a physician assistant at the world-renowned St. George’s Children’s Research Hospital. Jude; Sian Proctor is a PhD pilot and lecturer in geology at university level; and Christopher Sembroski is a former United States Air Force journeyman whose long profession as an aerospace engineer led him to his current workplace, Blue Origin.

Yet they got here to Inspiration4 as novices in spaceflight. This meant that TRISH researchers had to develop a test battery that could possibly be performed with minimal training. The Inspiration4 crew also wore Apple watches, and the capsule was equipped with environmental sensors that researchers were able to link to the results of other tests. The correlation of the data is “remarkable,” Dr. Donoviel said, but it surely gave researchers unique insight into how changes in a closed environment affect parameters similar to heart rate and cognitive performance.

Overall, researchers try to move toward digitizing tests and increasing passive data collection to reduce the cognitive load on the private astronaut. (NASA astronauts also take cognitive tests, but they do it with pencil and paper, Dr. Donoviel said.)

Collecting such information might be crucial as the number of personal residents venturing into space increases, which is able to almost actually occur in the coming decade. Scientists will have the option to higher understand the impact of spaceflight on individuals who don’t fit the mold of the typical NASA astronaut: male, white, and other people in the highest percentiles of physical and cognitive ability. However, this may only be possible if future space tourists want to collect data.

More data means a higher understanding of how spaceflight affects women compared to men, or it could help future space tourists with pre-existing conditions understand how they may fare in a zero-gravity environment. The results of the Inspiration4 project are promising, especially for space tourism: the TRISH paper concluded that, based on data from this mission, short-duration missions don’t pose significant health risks. This latest preliminary discovery adds to existing data that shows longer stays in space – on this case 340 days – is probably not as dangerous as once thought.

So far, business providers, from Axiom Space to SpaceX to Blue Origin, have been more than willing to work with TRISH and have agreed to standardize and mix data collected on their missions, Dr. Donoviel said.

“Everyone is competing for these people (as customers), but this allows them to contribute to a common knowledge base,” she added.

This is just the starting. The increase in the variety of non-governmental spaceflight missions raises major questions related to the standards, ethics and regulations of research involving humans in space. While more private residents are likely to go to space than ever before, will they be inquisitive about being guinea pigs for further scientific research? Would a private astronaut paying $50 million for luxury space tourism want to spend his time in orbit having ultrasounds performed on himself or having his temporary cognitive decline meticulously measured?

Probably; probably not. Last 12 months, Donoviel co-authored a publication entitled article in Science calling, amongst other things, for the development of a algorithm to govern business spaceflight missions. One of the principles the authors called for is social responsibility – essentially the idea that non-public astronauts likely have increased social responsibility for advancing research.

“If you go into space, you will rest on the laurels of all the public funds that made it possible for you to go to space. Taxpayers paid for all these space capabilities that have now made space travel possible. So you owe taxpayers research,” Dr. Donoviel argued. She added that advances in wearable technology have only eased the burden on study participants – not only with the Apple Watch, but in addition with technologies like Biobutton device that repeatedly accumulates multiple vital signs or a sweat stain.

“We won’t make your life difficult, we won’t stab you with a needle, we won’t force you to do an ultrasound, but put on the Biobutton and a sweatband.”