All About Space Medicine
It’s the year 2050, and you and your family are boarding a spacecraft for a 6-month long flight to Mars, where you will eventually settle. However, just a month in, you begin to realize to notice that your eyesight is getting worse, your face is swelling, you look considerably skinnier, your behavior has changed, and you are constantly feeling sick.
This is where space medicine comes into play. Space medicine can be defined generally as the practice of preventive medicine that pertains to the effect of spaceflight on humans. It provides fundamental support to astronauts and space exploration. This is because astronauts experience a plethora of problems up in space, everything from radiation exposure to muscle loss to cardiovascular problems to eyesight problems. It is up to space medicine and researchers in that field that together are responsible for the health and well-being of astronauts on board spaceflight missions.
Space medicine will, in the near future, be crazy disruptive to our society, and here are a few ways that space medicine will and are having a profound impact on us:
Space Medicine x Astronauts
In many ways, astronauts are the guinea pigs of the human race in space. We send them up to space, and they are flooded by experiments scientists on Earth have asked them to do. On Chris Hadfield’s last mission, along with his crew, they conducted a total of 130 different experiments in his 147 days in space! Some experiments involve the astronauts using their bodies as guinea pigs, like Robert Thirsk, who took part in the Bodies In Space Environment (BISE) experiment, where scientists were studying the ability to distinguish up from down in space. Other experiments such as the Radi-N2 experiment on radiation only involve astronauts observing and running the experiment. A more seemingly photogenic assignment is taking pictures of Earth to study climate change, urban sprawl, as well as capture major weather and geographical events such as hurricanes and volcano eruptions.
Space Medicine x Cancer research
Recently, biotech startup AngieX set out on the goal of testing a potential cancer drug and its effects in a weightless environment. Specifically, they were testing to see if the endothelial cells which supply blood to tumors would slow its growth in space. They hypothesized that the cells in microgravity would not grow. While the hypothesis so far is going according to plan, their research has the potential to open up a vast new array of biological research up in space as microgravity could soon play a huge role in curing diseases on Earth.
Space Medicine x Pharmaceutical research
Microgravity has also begun to pave the way for pharmaceutical research as well. In space the conditions are much more stable — no convection currents and reduced sedimentation just to name a few — which allows for crystalline structures to develop in a way that produces a much higher yield than in Earth-like conditions, according to a research project led by Merck Pharmaceuticals. This in turn has the ability to make drugs more potent and be more effective when produced in a more stable environment, and it too can have disruptive impacts on the human race to treat the most complex of diseases.
Space Medicine x Colonization
This is perhaps one of the ultimate goals of astronauts doing experiments in space, and the point of space medicine. While the International Space Station’s thick walls and Earth’s magnetic pull protects astronauts from radiation, as humans stray further from Earth, we will be less protected, which is why space medicine can provide those in space with a safe passage wherever they choose to go. This has massive impacts on us as we may, in the next few decades or even years, be using space medicine to our advantage as we journey to Mars and beyond.
Didn’t read the whole thing? Here are some key takeaways that you should keep in mind!
- Space medicine is the practice of medicine with a specific focus on the effects of spaceflight on humans.
- It will soon be massively disruptive to our society!
- Currently it is being applied in astronauts as well as in pharmaceutical and cancer research.
- In the future, space medicine will play a major factor in keeping us safe as we travel deep into space and to other planets.
Hope you enjoyed this article and stay tuned for upcoming articles!!
