{"id":1297,"date":"2019-11-23T21:08:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T21:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2019-11-23T21:24:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T21:24:54","slug":"what-a-year-in-space-did-to-scott-kelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/?p=1297","title":{"rendered":"WHAT a Year in Space Did to Scott Kelly"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Opposition of Science<\/div>\n
\"For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth.\" \n\n \u2014 Lamentations 3:33-34<\/blockquote><\/strong><\/div>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Article Source: <\/strong>The<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Atlantic<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the debate over whether human beings should set off to other worlds beyond Earth, one of the most compelling cons is this: Our bodies don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n\n

Few people know this better than Scott Kelly, the NASA astronaut who spent nearly a year on the International Space Station from 2015 to 2016. Like other astronauts, Kelly served as a test subject in the study of space travel\u2019s effects on the human body. Unlike other astronauts, Kelly has an identical twin, Mark, an astronaut himself. This gave researchers an uncommon opportunity to monitor the two brothers as they lived in two very different environments\u2014one on Earth and the other 250 miles above it.<\/p>\n\n

Nominate a nonprofit for The Renewal Awards<\/p>\n\n

According to their results,\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0Thursday in\u00a0Science<\/em>, Scott experienced a number of changes that Mark did not. Most of those changes went away after Scott returned to Earth. The long stint in space, the researchers say, produced some unexpected changes\u2014but did not lead to any clinically significant health differences.<\/p>\n\n

The body,\u00a0sensing and reacting to weightlessness,\u00a0<\/a>bristles at life in space. Fluids float freely and clog the sinuses, giving faces a puffy appearance. Bones, relieved of the job of bearing weight, thin. Muscles, faced with the same, atrophy. Parts of the eyeball, for reasons scientists are\u00a0still trying to pin down<\/a>, become squished or swollen. And from head to toe, cells, exposed to unearthly levels of radiation, become more at risk for cancer.<\/p>\n\n

Only the brain seems to love it; after all, it\u2019s the one that fervently processes the beautiful views of the gleaming planet below, delights in the somersaults made natural by microgravity, and comprehends\u2014or at least attempts to comprehend\u2014the wonder of being there, in\u00a0outer space<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n

Scientists had expected some of the changes observed in Scott, based on earlier research of astronauts. Some of the effects were no more dramatic than stress-related changes studied on Earth\u2014and space travel is certainly stressful. The others, such as the eyeball squishing, can clearly be attributed to Scott\u2019s unique experience in space.<\/p>\n\n

But that\u2019s where the explanations end. With all the variables involved, isolating a single cause is nearly impossible. Researchers can\u2019t know whether the changes were caused by microgravity, increased exposure to radiation, lack of air circulation, sleep disruption, a diet of freeze-dried food, or the stress of living in a cramped metal tube with the same people,\u00a0day in and day out<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Some of the most intriguing changes occurred at the chromosomal level, in the protective bits at the ends of chromosomes that make sure they replicate properly when cells divide. These caps, known as telomeres, are known to shorten as a result of stress. Researchers expected to see this change in Scott. Instead, the astronaut\u2019s telomeres lengthened. \u201cYou might at first think,\u00a0Oh, this is great. He\u2019s going to live longer<\/em>,\u201d Susan Bailey, the Colorado State University professor who led the telomere research, once told me. \u201cBut the opposite side of that coin is always that it also increases cancer risk because one of the very first things cancers do is turn telomerase on to maintain telomere length so they can essentially be immortal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Most of the telomeres bounced back after Scott returned to Earth, but he now has more short telomeres than he did before his mission. In general, this puts someone at greater risk for quicker aging, Bailey said.<\/p>\n\n

Researchers found some surprises in Scott\u2019s gene expression. On Earth, changes in gene behavior occur in response to shifts in routine activities, such as sleep and diet, and Mark\u2019s gene expression changed as well. But the changes to Scott\u2019s gene expression were distinct, and scientists were stunned at the number of changes they recorded, especially in mitochondrial genes, which help the body produce energy, and in genes related to the immune system. More than 90 percent of these genes returned to normal when Scott came back. (This doesn\u2019t mean, researchers are careful to note, that the rest are somehow \u201cmutated,\u201d as some news reports erroneously\u00a0suggested<\/a>\u00a0last year.)<\/p>\n\n

Researchers also detected changes in the mechanism that cells use to control gene expression, but they were too tiny to matter by the time Scott came back.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know yet if these changes are good or bad,\u201d explains Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York who led this part of the research. \u201cThis could just be how the body responds. But the genes are perturbed, so we want to see why and track them to see for how long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That seems to be the theme of most of the findings: Something changed, probably because Scott was in space, but it\u2019s not clear whether that\u2019s a good or bad thing.<\/p>\n\n

Like other astronauts, Scott\u2019s retinal nerve thickened, but whether his long-term vision will be affected is unclear. One category of bacteria in Scott\u2019s gut increased, while another decreased; the ratio returned to normal after the mission, and the shift remains a mystery. Scott\u2019s cognitive abilities, which improved during his mission, sharply declined after he came back, and though they rebounded, they never returned to preflight levels. Scientists suspect that the sudden return to gravity played a role, but so could have the sudden return to interacting with more than the six people he saw constantly. Part of it could even have been the fault of people like me\u2014the deluge of journalists who wanted to talk to Scott after he landed.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cPost-mission schedules\u2014science and media events\u2014are often very hectic and could have contributed to the decline,\u201d says Mathias Basner, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Perelman School of Medicine who designed the cognitive-performance tests.<\/p>\n\n

From the outset, researchers expected to find uncertainty in these results. The research, funded by NASA, is a case study of a single patient: Scott. Any detectable changes could be the result of space travel\u2014or of differences in experiences, or of random chance. The findings cannot be extrapolated to the wider astronaut population,\u00a0let alone the general population<\/a>. Nor are they very useful for predicting what might happen to humans if they venture beyond the orbit of the ISS, where the protective properties of Earth\u2019s magnetic field are still felt. Here, astronauts receive 10 times the usual amount of radiation, high-speed particles from the sun or from other sources in the cosmos. Out there, the exposure would be far worse.<\/p>\n\n

Scott Kelly retired from NASA in 2016, about a month after he returned to Earth and\u00a0his body began to adjust<\/a>. For some time, his legs felt jiggly, his joints ached, and his skin burned, unused to the touch of fabric, hugged close to him by gravity. Space, he said back then, had been disorienting. \u201cEven after I\u2019ve been here nearly a year, you don\u2019t feel perfectly normal,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s always a lingering something you feel. It\u2019s not necessarily uncomfortable, but it is a harsh environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The study of the twins doesn\u2019t have to be over. Another important mission is coming up: the 2020 election. Mark Kelly, also retired, is running for a Senate seat in Arizona. Maybe some researchers would like to see how astronauts do in a different kind of stressful situation.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of the telomeres bounced back after Scott returned to Earth, but he now has more short telomeres than he did before his mission. In general, this puts someone at greater risk for quicker aging, Bailey said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opposition-of-science","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1302,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions\/1302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inthedays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}