Safe Passage Astronaut Care for Exploration Missions (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Space travel is inherently risky, and space travel on long-duration missions (those of a year or longer) beyond Earth orbit (beyond the orbital
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The acquisition of a fundamental understanding of these risks and the development of solutions to the problems that they present are the subjects of this report. TASK OF THE COMMITTEE The general charge to the Committee on Creating a Vision for Space Medicine During Travel Beyond Earth Orbit was to develop a vision for space medicine for long-duration space travel.
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and (2) an approach to the collection of the clinical data necessary to ensure the safety of space travel beyond Earth orbit (Chapter 61.
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Making potential problems and overall risks clear and openly disclosing them will allow NASA to gain continuing public understanding, trust, and support for exploration-class space missions. NASA can tailor the amount of detail disclosed in relation to the anticipated severity and prevalence of the risks to astronaut health and safety and the level of support that NASA is seeking.
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Recommendation ~ NASA should give increased priority to understanding, mitigating, and communicating to the public the health risks of long-duration missions beyond Earth orbit. · The process of understanding and mitigating health risks should be open and shared with both the national and the international general biomedical and health care research communities.
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vt? vre space missions.
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guidance from prominent experts n clinical medicine. RESEARCH The goal of NASA-sponsored health care research is, first, to learn how
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Although some work on assessing the efficacies of countermeasures has been done, none has been shown to be effective in reducing the most significant effects of microgravity (bone mineral density loss, muscle
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Conclusion 3 NASA has devoted insufficient resources to developing and assessing the fundamental clinical information necessary for the safety of humans on long-d[? vration missions beyond Earth visit.
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It should focus on · providing an understanding of basic pathophysiological mechanisms by a systems approach; · using the International Space Station as the primary test bed for fundamental and human-based biological and behavioral research; · using more extensively analog environments that already exist and that have yet to be developed; · using the research strengths of the federal government, universities, and industry, including pharmaceutical, bioengineering, medical device, and biotechnology firms; and · developing the health care system for astronauts as a research database. BEHAVIORAL HEALTH 11 The prototype for a long-duration mission beyond Earth orbit is an interplanetary mission, with Mars as the likely destination.
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NASA has taken steps in two areas of importance: it has learned from the experiences of others on missions in analog environments such as operations on research stations in Antarctica, prolonged submarine missions, ancl creep diving operations; ancl it has learned about the nature of teams en cl the interaction of their members. The distinction between missions in low Earth orbit ancl long-cluration missions beyond Earth orbit is that in the latter there is no means of timely return, ancl all problems, including disruptive behaviors ancl negative crew interactions, must be dealt with within the spacecraft by the crew.
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~ral and simulated extreme terrestrial environments and venues like the International Space Station. Recommendation 4 NASA should give priority to increasing the knowledge base of the effects of living conditions and behavioral interactions on the health and performance of individuals and groups involved in long-duration missions beyond Earth orbit.
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The reality is that the astronaut is, in most cases, the only individual from whom clinical information relevant to space travel can be collected. Therefore, reliance on the voluntary participation of astronauts in clinical research to the same extent as reliance on volunteer participants on the ground may not be appropriate.
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to research with astronauts is needed to ensure the development of a safe working environment for long-duration space travel. · NASA should continue to pursue consensus among national space agencies and International Space Station partners on principles and procedures for the collection and analysis of astronaut medical data.
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Longd? vration space travel will require a different approach, one requiring wider participation of those with expertise in divergent, emerging and evolving fields.
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ORGANIZATION 19 Throughout this report the committee expresses concern over the lack of existing data and the lack of analyses of data on which decisions about the health and safety of astronauts on long-duration missions beyond Earth orbit can be based. For that reason, the committee recommends two basic mechanisms for retrieval of the necessary information: (1)
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The official who heads the organizational component should be assisted by officials who are separately responsible for astronaut clinical care and health care research. The proposed organizational component should · have authority over basic, translational, and clinical biomedical and behavioral health research; · foster coordination between NASA and the external research community; and · be overseen by an external advisory group, modeled on advisory groups of the National Institutes of Health and other federal external advisory groups, to provide program review, strategic planning, and leverage to assist NASA in meeting its goals for astronaut health.
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Landing of the space shuttle Discovery at the Kennedy Space Center on June 12, 1998, marking the end of STS-91, the final space shuttle-Mir docking mission, and 812 days of continuous U.S. presence in Earth orbit.
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