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What is Space Health Research and Why Does it Matter?

Imagine this: It’s 2035, and the first humans have just set foot on Mars. But instead of celebrating, they face a serious problem—half the crew struggles to walk because their muscles and bones have weakened after months in space. Their immune systems are compromised, and even small injuries take longer to heal. The harsh environment, exposure to cosmic radiation, and psychological stress of being millions of miles away from Earth all take a toll on their health. This isn’t science fiction—it’s a challenge we must solve today if we want deep-space exploration to succeed. Before we can send humans to Mars, establish lunar bases, or make space tourism accessible to all, we need to fully understand…

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Featured

 Hazards During Spaceflight Can Affect Human Health

Space missions present several unique challenges to human health and performance, including space radiation, unique gravity fields, living with just a small group of companions in a small space for a long time, limited resources like food and water, and being far away from Earth. Since our last visit to the Moon, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have identified over 20 categories of human health risks that are related to these spaceflight hazards. Identifying the human health risks posed by space travel allows new science experiments to be designed and new knowledge to be gained, so we can ensure the health and safety of astronauts on their journeys of space exploration.

 Interstellar Space Travel Will Never, Ever Happen

I’m grossly oversimplifying the math but, if anything, those numbers still downplay the difficulty. To get the trip down to a single human lifetime, you’d need to get a ship going so absurdly fast that the physics challenges become ludicrous. In the hopelessly optimistic scenario that we could get something going a tenth of the speed of light (that is, thousands of times faster than our Mars ship, or anything that we even kind of know how to build), that means running into a piece of space debris the size of a grain of sand would impact the hull with the force of a nuclear explosion.

Articles of Interest

An Exhaustive Inventory of the International Space Station's Medicine Cabinet

Life in space is fraught with a dizzying array of potential calamities. With no quick lifeline to an ambulance or hospitals, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have to be prepared to tackle medical emergencies, literally on the fly.

Can the Human Body Endure a Voyage to Mars?

In the coming years, an unprecedented number of people will leave planet Earth—but it’s becoming increasingly clear that deep space will make us sick. Only twenty-four astronauts have exited low Earth orbit—and that was fifty years ago, for less than two weeks at a time. A “short” round-trip Mars mission might leave the safety of our planet for years.

Challenges facing the human exploration of Mars

Sending people to Mars has long been on humanity’s to-do list. But it’s no secret the obstacles are daunting. The fact that no person has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit since the Apollo program ended in 1972 highlights the reality that long-duration, long-distance missions with fragile humans on board are fraught with intimidating challenges.

Could Space Travel Make Astronauts Go Blind?

Sad news for our space adventurers: A new study indicates that time spent in zero gravity may be bad for their vision.

Getting sick in space on the way to Mars

As NASA announces its aim to have humans on Mars by the 2030s via a Deep Space Gateway - humans who make the long space journey will experience health risks we’ve never faced before

NASA Is Considering Deep Sleep for Human Mars Mission

A NASA-backed study is exploring an innovative way to bring humans to Mars: Putting the spaceship crew in a deep sleep while they travel to the Red Planet.

One Of The Biggest Obstacles To Long-Term Space Travel Is Hiding In Our Bones

Bone physiology is, without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges to long-term space travel. Your body slowly but constantly remodels your bones (even in adulthood) and without gravity, your body has much less stimulus to tell it, "Hey, this bone you're making needs to be strong."

Ready for Mars? From Mars-500 to zero-gravity medical issues

Following 50 years of human spaceflight experience, the 500 or so men and women who have ventured into space have been carefully studied both during and after their flights in zero gravity. Detailed biomedical research on board the International Space Station (ISS) during the last 10 years has revealed much about the behaviour of the human body in this strange world of micro-gravity that is of direct relevance to potential Mars missions.

Red risks for a journey to the red planet: The highest priority human health risks for a mission to Mars

NASA’s plans for space exploration include a return to the Moon to stay—boots back on the lunar surface with an orbital outpost. This station will be a launch point for voyages to destinations further away in our solar system, including journeys to the red planet Mars. To ensure success of these missions, health and performance risks associated with the unique hazards of spaceflight must be adequately controlled. These hazards—space radiation, altered gravity fields, isolation and confinement, closed environments, and distance from Earth—are linked with over 30 human health risks as documented by NASA’s Human Research Program.

Study Explores the Health Risks of Deep-Space Travel

The Apollo astronauts who reached the Moon die more often from heart disease than astronauts who never made it to space or who only reached low-earth orbit, bringing attention to the potential perils of deep-space travel.

Surviving on Mars: why getting humans to the Red Planet begins at the South Pole

Beth Healey researches health in extreme environments, spending a little over a year 1,000 miles from the geographic South Pole in Antarctica at a base called Concordia. Her research will help prepare humans for the physical effects of space travel and interplanetary colonisation, specifically to Mars, but will also have applications back on Earth.

The Health Risks of Space Travel

But despite such achievements, space travel still involves a myriad of health risks for people. From DNA damage caused by radiation exposure to the bone loss, muscle loss, and blood pressure changes that occur when living in microgravity, to name a few. And the longer a person is in space, the greater the toll on their health.

The top 7 ways a trip to Mars could kill you, illustrated

Elon Musk wants humans to travel to Mars. He just doesn’t want to be the first to go. Because, uh, there’s a very good chance of dying.

This major health risk is stopping us travelling to Mars

On a trip to Mars, however, it’s open season for cosmic rays. In addition, the planet lost its magnetic field billions of years ago, which will expose the first Mars explorers to extra radiation.

What One Year of Space Travel Does to the Human Body

The goal of the yearlong expedition is to better understand how the human body reacts to microgravity for long durations. Researchers say they hope the data acquired in this mission will help them figure out how to send humans on even longer missions, like one to Mars, which would take two-and-a-half years, roundtrip.

What Space People Can Teach Us about Healthy Living

However, imagine life two or three hundred years from now. If we haven’t blown ourselves up or fried the planet by then, it’s likely that a lot more everyday people will be spending time in space. For future asteroid miners, mars and lunar settlers, scientists, tourists and explorers, precise dietary and exercise practices will be a mundane but necessary part of daily life.

Resources

5 Hazards of Human Spaceflight

A human journey to Mars, at first glance, offers an inexhaustible amount of complexities. To bring such a mission to the Red Planet from fiction to fact, NASA’s Human Research Program has pinpointed five hazards that astronauts will encounter on their journeys. These include space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, gravity (and the lack of it), and closed or hostile environments.

6 ways health would suffer on a trip to Mars

NASA has aims to have humans on Mars by the 2030s—but long-distance space travel comes with a unique set of health problems.