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By NASA
Parallels between spaceflight and the aging process may extend to encompass frailty.
Figure Left: Venn diagram of differentially expressed frailty genes in rodent and human samples shows the common differentially expressed genes between the two species.
Figure Right: Schematic of the Inspiration4 experiments and samples.
This study relied on data from the OSDR, including 7 rodent spaceflight datasets, 2 human space analog datasets, astronaut data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Inspiration4. Data on sarcopenia were mined from National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Gene Expression Omnibus. Spaceflight accelerates the symptoms of aging in astronaut bodies by inducing genomic instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, and increased inflammation. This is the first study to comprehensively examine biomarkers and pathways associated with spaceflight and terrestrial aging, frailty, and sarcopenia.
Main Findings:
Spaceflight induced notable changes in gene expression patterns related to frailty and muscle loss indicative of a frailty-like condition. Exposure to the space environment leads to changes related to inflammation, muscle wasting, and other age-related features observed in both mice and humans. Parallels between spaceflight and the aging process may extend to also encompass frailty. Impact: This work reveals the need for a frailty index to monitor development of frailty-related astronaut health risks during spaceflight. The results provide insights into potential avenues for developing countermeasures to combat frailty-related health risks for both astronauts and aging populations on Earth.
This study was part of the 44-article Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) package published in Nature. It demonstrates the effectiveness of open science combined with robust data submission, standards, and curation. The study began within and was organized through the Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) of NASA’s Open Science Data Repository (OSDR).
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By European Space Agency
The Space Resources Challenge was launched last week, an opportunity for innovators to pioneer the technologies that will help humankind live and work sustainably on the Moon.
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By Space Force
U.S. Space Forces - Space supports NASA human space flight by planning, integrating, executing, and assessing space operations, providing continuous space situational awareness monitoring for the International Space Station and visiting spacecraft.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Victor Glover of NASA sips on a water bag. The latest book marks our third effort to review available literature regarding the role of nutrition in astronaut health. In 2009, we reviewed the existing knowledge and history of human nutrition for spaceflight, with a key goal of identifying additional data that would be required before NASA could confidently reduce the risk of an inadequate food system or inadequate nutrition to as low as possible in support of human expeditions to the Moon or Mars. We used a nutrient-by-nutrient approach to address this effort, and we included a brief description of the space food systems during historical space programs.
In 2014, we published a second volume of the book, which was not so much a second edition, but rather a view of space nutrition from a different perspective. This volume updated research that had been published in the intervening 6 years and addressed space nutrition with a more physiological systems-based approach.
The current version is an expanded, updated version of that second book, providing both a systems approach overall, but also including details of nutrients and their roles within each system. As such, this book is divided into chapters based on physiological systems (e.g., bone, muscle, ocular); highlighted in each chapter are the nutrients associated with that particular system. We provide updated information on space food
systems and constraints of the same, and provide dietary intake data from International Space Station (ISS) astronauts.
We present data from ground-based analog studies, designed to mimic one or more conditions similar to those produced by spaceflight. Head-down tilt bed rest is a common analog of the general (and specifically musculoskeletal) disuse of spaceflight. Nutrition research from Antarctica relies on the associated confinement
and isolation, in addition to the lack of sunlight exposure during the winter months. Undersea habitats help expand our understanding of nutritional changes in a confined space with a hyperbaric atmosphere. We also review spaceflight research, including data from now “historical” flights on the Space Shuttle, data from the Russian space station Mir, and earlier space programs such as Apollo and Skylab. The ISS, now more than
20 years old, has provided (and continues to provide) a wealth of nutrition findings from extended-duration spaceflights of 4 to 12 months. We review findings from this platform as well, providing a comprehensive review of what is known regarding the role of human nutrition in keeping astronauts healthy.
With this latest book, we hope we have accurately captured the current state of the field of space food and nutrition, and that we have provided some guideposts for work that remains to be done to enable safe and successful human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.
Human Adaptation to Spaceflight: The Role of Food and Nutrition – 2nd Edition
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Human Adaptation to Spaceflight: The Role of Food and Nutrition – 1st Edition
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Last Updated Oct 23, 2024 EditorRobert E. LewisLocationJohnson Space Center Related Terms
Human Health and Performance Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
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By NASA
Radioisotope Power Systems RPS Home About About RPS About the Program About Plutonium-238 Safety and Reliability For Mission Planners Contact Systems Overview Power Systems Thermal Systems Dynamic Radioisotope Power Missions Overview Timeline News Resources STEM Overview Power to Explore Contest Kid-Friendly Videos FAQ 5 Min Read After 60 Years, Nuclear Power for Spaceflight is Still Tried and True
Workers install one of three Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) on the Cassini spacecraft. More › Credits:
NASA Editor’s Note: Originally published on June 21, 2021.
Six decades after the launch of the first nuclear-powered space mission, Transit IV-A, NASA is embarking on a bold future of human exploration and scientific discovery. This future builds on a proud history of safely launching and operating nuclear-powered missions in space.
“Nuclear power has opened the solar system to exploration, allowing us to observe and understand dark, distant planetary bodies that would otherwise be unreachable. And we’re just getting started,” said Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Future nuclear power and propulsion systems will help revolutionize our understanding of the solar system and beyond and play a crucial role in enabling long-term human missions to the Moon and Mars.”
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Space nuclear power to explore the deepest, dustiest, darkest, and most distant regions of our solar system and beyond. NASA From Humble Beginnings: Nuclear Power Spawns an Age of Scientific Discovery
On June 29, 1961, the John’s Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory launched the Transit IV-A Spacecraft. It was a U.S. Navy navigational satellite with a SNAP-3B radioisotope powered generator producing 2.7 watts of electrical power — about enough to light an LED bulb. Transit IV-A broke an APL mission-duration record and confirmed the Earth’s equator is elliptical. It also set the stage for ground-breaking missions that have extended humanity’s reach across the solar system.
Since 1961, NASA has flown more than 25 missions carrying a nuclear power system through a successful partnership with the Department of Energy (DOE), which provides the power systems and plutonium-238 fuel.
“The department and our national laboratory partners are honored to play a role in powering NASA’s space exploration activities,” said Tracey Bishop, deputy assistant secretary in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. “Radioisotope Power Systems are a natural extension of our core mission to create technological solutions that meet the complex energy needs of space research, exploration, and innovation.”
There are only two practical ways to provide long-term electrical power in space: the light of the sun or heat from a nuclear source.
We couldn’t do the mission without it. No other technology exists to power a mission this far away from the Sun, even today.
Alan Stern
Principal Investigator, NASA’s New Horizons Mission to Pluto and Beyond
“As missions move farther away from the Sun to dark, dusty, and harsh environments, like Jupiter, Pluto, and Titan, they become impossible or extremely limited without nuclear power,” said Leonard Dudzinski, chief technologist for NASA’s Planetary Science Division and program executive for Radioisotope Power.
That’s where Radioisotope Power Systems, or RPS, come in. They are a category of power systems that convert heat generated by the decay of plutonium-238 fuel into electricity.
“These systems are reliable and efficient,” said June Zakrajsek, manager for NASA’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program office at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “They operate continuously over long-duration space missions regardless of sunlight, temperature, charged particle radiation, or surface conditions like thick clouds or dust. They’ve allowed us to explore from the Sun to Pluto and beyond.”
RPS powered the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package. They’ve sustained Voyager 1 and 2 since 1977, and they kept Cassini-Huygens’ instruments warm as it explored frigid Saturn and its moon Titan.
Today, a Multi-Mission Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) powers the Perseverance rover, which is captivating the nation as it searches for signs of ancient life on Mars, and a single RTG is sustaining New Horizons as it ventures on its way out of the solar system 15 years after its launch.
“The RTG was and still is crucial to New Horizons,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute. “We couldn’t do the mission without it. No other technology exists to power a mission this far away from the Sun, even today.”
New Horizons carries seven scientific instruments and a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. The spacecraft weighs 1,060 pounds. NASA/JHUAPL Great Things to Come: Science and Human Exploration
Dragonfly, which is set to launch in 2028, is the next mission with plans to use an MMRTG. Part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, Dragonfly is an octocopter designed to explore and collect samples on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, an ocean world with a dense, hazy atmosphere.
“RPS is really an enabling technology,” said APL’s Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for the upcoming Dragonfly mission. “Early missions like Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini that relied on RPS have completely changed our understanding and given us a geography of the distant solar system…Cassini gave us our first close-up look at the surface of Titan.”
According to Turtle, the MMRTG serves two purposes on Dragonfly: power output to charge the lander’s battery and waste heat to keep its instruments and electronics warm.
“Flight is a very high-power activity. We’ll use a battery for flight and science activities and recharge the battery using the MMRTG,” said Turtle. “The waste heat from the power system is a key aspect of our thermal design. The surface of Titan is very cold, but we can keep the interior of the lander warm and cozy using the heat from the MMRTG.”
As the scientific community continues to benefit from RPS, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is investing in new technology using reactors and low-enriched uranium fuel to enable a robust human presence on the Moon and eventually human missions to Mars.
Astronauts will need plentiful and continuous power to survive the long lunar nights and explore the dark craters on the Moon’s South Pole. A fission surface power system could provide enough juice to power robust operations. NASA is leading an effort, working with the DOE and industry to design a fission power system for a future lunar demonstration that will pave the way for base camps on the Moon and Mars.
NASA has also thought about viable ways to reduce the time it takes to travel to Mars, including nuclear propulsion systems.
As NASA advances its bold vision of exploration and scientific discovery in space, it benefits from 60 years of the safe use of nuclear power during spaceflight. Sixty years of enlightenment that all started with a little satellite called Transit IV-A.
News Media Contact
Jan Wittry
NASA’s Glenn Research Center
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