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By NASA
NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Nick Hague pedals on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization (CEVIS), an exercise cycle located aboard the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module. CEVIS provides aerobic and cardiovascular conditioning through recumbent (leaning back position) or upright cycling activities.NASA Lee esta historia en español aquí.
The International Space Station is humanity’s home in space and a research station orbiting about 250 miles above the Earth. NASA and its international partners have maintained a continuous human presence aboard the space station for more than 24 years, conducting research that is not possible on Earth.
The people living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory also are part of the research being conducted, helping to address complex human health issues on Earth and prepare humanity for travel farther than ever before, including the Moon and Mars.
Here are a few frequently asked questions about how NASA and its team of medical physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, exercise scientists, and other specialized caretakers ensure astronauts’ health and fitness aboard the orbiting laboratory.
How long is a typical stay aboard the International Space Station?
A typical mission to the International Space Station lasts about six months, but can vary based on visiting spacecraft schedules, mission priorities, and other factors. NASA astronauts also have remained aboard the space station for longer periods of time. These are known as long-duration missions, and previous missions have given NASA volumes of data about long-term spaceflight and its effects on the human body, which the agency applies to any crewed mission.
During long-duration missions, NASA’s team of medical professionals focus on optimizing astronauts’ physical and behavioral health and their performance to help ensure mission success. These efforts also are helping NASA prepare for future human missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
How does NASA keep astronauts healthy while in space?
NASA has a team of medical doctors, psychologists, and others on the ground dedicated to supporting the health and well-being of astronauts before, during, and after each space mission. NASA assigns physicians with specialized training in space medicine, called flight surgeons, to each crew once named to a mission. Flight surgeons oversee the health care and medical training as crew members prepare for their mission, and they monitor the crew’s health before, during, and after their mission to the space station.
How does NASA support its astronauts’ mental and emotional well-being while in space?
The NASA behavioral health team provides individually determined psychological support services for crew members and their families during each mission. Ensuring astronauts can thrive in extreme environments starts as early as the astronaut selection process, in which applicants are evaluated on competencies such as adaptability and resilience. Astronauts receive extensive training to help them use self-assessment tools and treatments to manage their behavioral health. NASA also provides training in expeditionary skills to prepare every astronaut for missions on important competencies, such as self-care and team care, communication, and leadership and followership skills.
To help maintain motivation and morale aboard the space station, astronauts can email, call, and video conference with their family and friends, receive crew care packages aboard NASA’s cargo resupply missions, and teleconference with a psychologist, if needed.
How does microgravity affect astronaut physical health?
In microgravity, without the continuous load of Earth’s gravity, there are many changes to the human body. NASA understands many of the human system responses to the space environment, including adaptations to bone density, muscle, sensory-motor, and cardiovascular health, but there is still much to learn. These spaceflight effects vary from astronaut to astronaut, so NASA flight surgeons regularly monitor each crew member’s health during a mission and individualize diet and fitness routines to prioritize health and fitness while in space.
Why do astronauts exercise in space?
Each astronaut aboard the orbiting laboratory engages in specifically designed, Earth-like exercise plans. To maintain their strength and endurance, crew members are scheduled for two and a half hours of daily exercise to support muscle, bone, aerobic, and sensorimotor health. Current equipment onboard the space station includes the ARED (Advanced Resistive Exercise Device), which mimics weightlifting; a treadmill, called T2; and the CEVIS (Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System) for cardiovascular exercise.
What roles do food and nutrition play in supporting astronaut health?
Nutrition plays a critical role in maintaining an astronaut’s health and optimal performance before, during, and after their mission. Food also plays a psychosocial role during an astronaut’s long-duration stay aboard the space station. Experts working in NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston develop foods that are nutritious and appetizing. Crew members also have the opportunity to supplement the menu with personal favorites and off-the-shelf items, which can provide a taste of home.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 71 Flight Engineer Tracy C. Dyson is pictured in the galley aboard the International Space Station’s Unity module showing off food packets from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).NASA How does NASA know whether astronauts are getting the proper nutrients?
NASA’s nutritional biochemistry dietitians and scientists determine the nutrients (vitamins, minerals, calories) the astronauts require while in space. This team tracks what each crew member eats through a tablet-based tracking program, which each astronaut completes daily. The data from the app is sent to the dietitians weekly to monitor dietary intake. Analyzing astronaut blood and urine samples taken before, during, and after space missions is a crucial part of studying how their bodies respond to the unique conditions of spaceflight. These samples provide valuable insight into how each astronaut adapts to microgravity, radiation, and other factors that affect human physiology in space.
How do astronauts train to work together while in space?
In addition to technical training, astronauts participate in team skills training. They learn effective group living skills and how to look out for and support one another. Due to its remote and isolated nature, long-duration spaceflight can make teamwork difficult. Astronauts must maintain situational awareness and implement the flight program in an ever-changing environment. Therefore, effective communication is critical when working as a team aboard station and with multiple support teams on the ground. Astronauts also need to be able to communicate complex information to people with different professional backgrounds. Ultimately, astronauts are people living and working together aboard the station and must be able to do a highly technical job and resolve any interpersonal issues that might arise.
What happens if there is a medical emergency on the space station?
All astronauts undergo medical training and have regular contact with a team of doctors closely monitoring their health on the ground. NASA also maintains a robust pharmacy and a suite of medical equipment onboard the space station to treat various conditions and injuries. If a medical emergency requires a return to Earth, the crew will return in the spacecraft they launched aboard to receive urgent medical care on the ground.
Expedition 69 NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is seen resting and talking with NASA ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano, kneeling left, NASA Flight Surgeon Josef Schmid, red hat, and NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office Joe Acaba, outside the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft after he landed with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023.NASA/Bill Ingalls Learn more about NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate at:
www.nasa.gov/hhp
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By European Space Agency
As Arctic temperatures rise, marine-terminating glaciers—especially in places like Svalbard—are undergoing rapid retreat and intensified calving.
The ESA-funded Space for Shore project utilises radar data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to provide precise, year-over-year insights into glacier retreat and calving intensity, particularly in areas like Kongsfjorden, where notable glaciers are experiencing significant retreat.
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By NASA
“Discipline is one of the things that they instill within you [in the military.] All the way starting in boot camp, [the goal] is doing the right thing when no one is looking. Integrity.
“Whenever you’re in boot camp, they always say, ‘it’s too easy.’ It’s just too easy to follow the rules, read the book, read the regulations, and that’s probably why I enjoy contracting. I like reading the regulations and following the regulations.
…[Now that I work for Safety and Mission Assurance,] it’s really cool to read everything about the different types of the scenarios. I always get to see the task orders and the type of work that is going on to keep people safe on the ground and in the air.”
— Miranda Meyer, Contract Specialist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Image Credit: NASA/Thalia Patrinos
Interviewer: NASA/Thalia Patrinos
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
With one of its solar arrays deployed, NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer sits in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space. The large silver grate attached to the spacecraft is the radiator for HVM³, one of two instruments that the mission will use to better understand the lunar water cycle.Lockheed Martin Space There’s water on the Moon, but scientists only have a general idea of where it is and what form it is in. A trailblazing NASA mission will get some answers.
When NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer begins orbiting the Moon next year, it will help resolve an enduring mystery: Where is the Moon’s water? Scientists have seen signs suggesting it exists even where temperatures soar on the lunar surface, and there’s good reason to believe it can be found as surface ice in permanently shadowed craters, places that have not seen direct sunlight for billions of years. But, so far, there have been few definitive answers, and a full understanding of the nature of the Moon’s water cycle remains stubbornly out of reach.
This is where Lunar Trailblazer comes in. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, the small satellite will map the Moon’s surface water in unprecedented detail to determine the water’s abundance, location, form, and how it changes over time.
“Making high-resolution measurements of the type and amount of lunar water will help us understand the lunar water cycle, and it will provide clues to other questions, like how and when did Earth get its water,” said Bethany Ehlmann, principal investigator for Lunar Trailblazer at Caltech. “But understanding the inventory of lunar water is also important if we are to establish a sustained human and robotic presence on the Moon and beyond.”
Future explorers could process lunar ice to create breathable oxygen or even fuel. And they could also conduct science. Using information from Lunar Trailblazer, future human or robotic scientific investigations could sample the ice for later study to determine where the water came from. For example, the presence of ammonia in ice samples may indicate the water came from comets; sulfur, on the other hand, could show that it was vented to the surface from the lunar interior when the Moon was young and volcanically active.
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer in lunar orbit about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft weighs only 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and measures 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed.Lockheed Martin Space “In the future, scientists could analyze the ice in the interiors of permanently shadowed craters to learn more about the origins of water on the Moon,” said Rachel Klima, Lunar Trailblazer deputy principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “Like an ice core from a glacier on Earth can reveal the ancient history of our planet’s atmospheric composition, this pristine lunar ice could provide clues as to where that water came from and how and when it got there.”
Understanding whether water molecules move freely across the surface of the Moon or are locked inside rock is also scientifically important. Water molecules could move from frosty “cold traps” to other locations throughout the lunar day. Frost heated by the Sun sublimates (turning from solid ice to a gas without going through a liquid phase), allowing the molecules to move as a gas to other cold locations, where they could form new frost as the Sun moves overhead. Knowing how water moves on the Moon could also lead to new insights into the water cycles on other airless bodies, such as asteroids
Two Instruments, One Mission
Two science instruments aboard the spacecraft will help unlock these secrets: the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) infrared spectrometer and the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) infrared multispectral imager.
Developed by JPL, HVM3 will detect and map the spectral fingerprints, or wavelengths of reflected sunlight, of minerals and the different forms of water on the lunar surface. The spectrometer can use faint reflected light from the walls of craters to see the floor of even permanently shadowed craters.
The LTM instrument, which was built by the University of Oxford and funded by the UK Space Agency, will map the minerals and thermal properties of the same lunar landscape. Together they will create a picture of the abundance, location, and form of water while also tracking how its distribution changes over time.
“The LTM instrument precisely maps the surface temperature of the Moon while the HVM3 instrument looks for the spectral signature of water molecules,” said Neil Bowles, instrument scientist for LTM at the University of Oxford. “Both instruments will allow us to understand how surface temperature affects water, improving our knowledge of the presence and distribution of these molecules on the Moon.”
Weighing only 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and measuring 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the Moon about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the surface. The mission was selected by NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) program in 2019 and will hitch a ride on the same launch as the Intuitive Machines-2 delivery to the Moon through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. Lunar Trailblazer passed a critical operational readiness review in early October at Caltech after completing environmental testing in August at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, where it was assembled.
The orbiter and its science instruments are now being put through flight system software tests that simulate key aspects of launch, maneuvers, and the science mission while in orbit around the Moon. At the same time, the operations team led by IPAC at Caltech is conducting tests to simulate commanding, communication with NASA’s Deep Space Network, and navigation.
More About Lunar Trailblazer
Lunar Trailblazer is managed by JPL, and its science investigation and mission operations are led by Caltech with the mission operations center at IPAC. Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL also provides system engineering, mission assurance, the HVM3 instrument, as well as mission design and navigation. Lockheed Martin Space provides the spacecraft, integrates the flight system, and supports operations under contract with Caltech.
SIMPLEx mission investigations are managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Discovery Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The program conducts space science investigations in the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.
For more information about Lunar Trailblazer, visit:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/lunar-trailblazer
News Media Contacts
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Gordon Squires
IPAC, Pasadena, Calif.
626-395-3121
squires@ipac.caltech.edu
2024-148
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Last Updated Oct 29, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
NASA Reveals Prototype Telescope for Gravitational Wave Observatory
NASA has revealed the first look at a full-scale prototype for six telescopes that will enable, in the next decade, the space-based detection of gravitational waves — ripples in space-time caused by merging black holes and other cosmic sources.
On May 20, the full-scale Engineering Development Unit Telescope for the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, still in its shipping frame, was moved within a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA/Dennis Henry The LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission is led by ESA (European Space Agency) in partnership with NASA to detect gravitational waves by using lasers to measure precise distances — down to picometers, or trillionths of a meter — between a trio of spacecraft distributed in a vast configuration larger than the Sun. Each side of the triangular array will measure nearly 1.6 million miles, or 2.5 million kilometers.
“Twin telescopes aboard each spacecraft will both transmit and receive infrared laser beams to track their companions, and NASA is supplying all six of them to the LISA mission,” said Ryan DeRosa, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The prototype, called the Engineering Development Unit Telescope, will guide us as we work toward building the flight hardware.”
The prototype LISA telescope undergoes post-delivery inspection in a darkened NASA Goddard clean room on May 20. The entire telescope is made from an amber-colored glass-ceramic that resists changes in shape over a wide temperature range, and the mirror’s surface is coated in gold. NASA/Dennis Henry The Engineering Development Unit Telescope, which was manufactured and assembled by L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York, arrived at Goddard in May. The primary mirror is coated in gold to better reflect the infrared lasers and to reduce heat loss from a surface exposed to cold space since the telescope will operate best when close to room temperature.
The prototype is made entirely from an amber-colored glass-ceramic called Zerodur, manufactured by Schott in Mainz, Germany. The material is widely used for telescope mirrors and other applications requiring high precision because its shape changes very little over a wide range of temperatures.
The LISA mission is slated to launch in the mid-2030s.
Download additional images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Oct 22, 2024 Related Terms
Astrophysics Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Goddard Space Flight Center Gravitational Waves LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) The Universe Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
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