Human Health and Performance Research Part Of Space Adventures Mission
Human health and performance research will be a part of Yusaku Maezawa’s spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) launching December 8 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
"Private spaceflight participants have an important role in space medicine as they often have a different health profile to professional astronauts. Our work in partnership with space medicine experts is enabling people with mild health conditions to launch to space thereby improving our collective knowledge of how the body reacts to gravitational forces and weightlessness.”
Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures.
According to Space Adventures, which is facilitating Maezawa’s flight, the research, designed to increase the understanding of the impact of spaceflight on the human body, will be conducted by Yozo Hirano, a Japanese citizen who will be accompanying Maezawa on his flight. Important biomedical data will be collected before launch and upon Hirano’s return to Earth.
The protocols have been designed by the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine. TRISH is a lean, virtual institute empowered by the NASA Human Research Program to solve the challenges of human deep space exploration. The program seeks and supports high-impact science and technologies to enable every human to explore the Moon and Mars safely. It identifies and funds disruptive, breakthrough approaches that reduce risks to human health and performance. TRISH supports both high-risk early-stage research as well as pre-seed and seed-stage health technologies that can be modified for use by astronauts in deep space exploration. Led by Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Space Medicine, the consortium leverages partnerships with Caltech and MIT.
“I am excited to participate in this research as it will help scientists reduce health risks for future space explorers,” said Yozo Hirano, spaceflight participant.
“We thank Yozo for his participation in the TRISH research. Private spaceflight participants have an important role in space medicine as they often have a different health profile to professional astronauts. Our work in partnership with space medicine experts is enabling people with mild health conditions to launch to space thereby improving our collective knowledge of how the body reacts to gravitational forces and weightlessness,” said Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures.
(Source: Space Adventures news release. Additional information provided by TRISH. Images provided by TRISH and from file)