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This article originally appeared on The conversation. The post contributed to the article at Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Elisa Raffaella Ferrè, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway
For the first time in 11 years, the European Space Agency (ESA) is recruiting new astronauts. Applications will open on March 31, 2021 for eight weeks, followed by a six-step selection process to identify the next generation of European astronauts.
By 2030, humans will once again walk the moon’s surface, travel to Mars, and potentially enjoy suborbital vacations. The new space age will bring enormous benefits to all of us. It will push technologies as we find ways to live sustainably beyond planet Earth, it will create exciting jobs and generate new socio-economic opportunities.
Recruiting new astronauts is the first step in this new era of human space exploration. Many people may have dreamed of becoming an astronaut since childhood, but do you have what it takes?
Related: How to become an astronaut
The criterion
Becoming an astronaut is neither simple nor easy. Esa is looking for candidates with different profiles and backgrounds. However, there are minimum requirements.
Applicants should be knowledgeable in scientific disciplines, with a university degree in physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, engineering or medicine. They must have demonstrated operational and leadership skills and preferably have flying experience. However, there are many other skills that can be a real asset to selection such as wilderness experience, teamwork and adaptability, self-control and fluency in languages.
This time, Esa opens up her criteria for applicants’ physical capacity, encouraging people with physical disabilities to apply if they match otherwise. This is part of a project that is looking at how to best adapt space travel for disabled astronauts.
Related: 15 space travel tips from an astronaut
The physical challenges
Advances in technology have enabled us not only to deliver humans to space, but also to live in space.
However, these longer space missions will present much greater challenges to human health and performance than the challenges currently facing astronauts. Unprecedented distance, duration, isolation and increasingly autonomous operations will be combined with long exposure to a different type of gravity than Earth – like weightlessness or partial gravity on the Moon and Mars.
Space is a hostile environment for human health, with extreme temperatures, a lack of atmospheric pressure, microgravity, solar and galactic cosmic radiation, and high-speed micrometeorites.
Radiation is considered one of the most threatening space hazards. On Earth, the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere protect us from the majority of the particles that make up the space radiation environment. Even brief exposure to space radiation can be extremely hazardous to health. Radiation has been shown to increase cancer risk, damage the central nervous system, impair cognitive function, reduce motor control, and affect behavior.
Read more: Astronaut has blood clot in space – our study now shows how best to protect the crew
The transition from Earth’s gravity to another is also trickier than it looks. Exposure to non-terrestrial gravity leads to dramatic structural and functional changes in human physiology, including alterations in the cardiovascular, neural and musculoskeletal systems.
Upon entering microgravity, for example, pressure is removed from bodily tissues, causing fluids to migrate from the legs to the upper body and head – you may have noticed the swollen faces of astronauts. As a result, vision deteriorates due to pressure changes in the brain. Changes have been seen in muscles, which shrink and absorb extra tissue due to lack of use, and in bones, which lose about 15% of their structural density.
Mental challenges
Cognitive, psychological, and psychosocial challenges are among the most critical issues humans face during long duration spaceflight. Living in a confined space, away from home, in microgravity, for long periods with other people is no easy task.
Dealing with microgravity is extremely difficult for the human brain. During their first days of weightlessness, between 40% and 60% of astronauts suffer from a condition called space adaptation disease. This causes symptoms of dizziness, dizziness, headache, cold sweating, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting. The consequences range from mild discomfort to impaired cognitive performance. For this reason, no extra-vehicular activity or space walk is allowed during the first days of space missions.
Read more: Astronauts are isolated experts, here’s what they can teach us
Psychosocial changes have also been observed in astronauts. Some showed reduced communication skills, less interaction with other crew members, and a tendency to focus more on themselves. Declining motivation, fatigue, and social tensions can be easily triggered by isolation and confinement in an extremely demanding and potentially deadly environment.
So it’s no surprise that space agencies pay attention to cognitive and psychological demands when selecting new astronauts. Applicants must demonstrate good reasoning, memory and concentration skills, the ability to work with others, a low level of aggression and emotional stability to cope with the level of stress and emergencies that may arise during the flight spatial.
Long duration space flights have revealed a multitude of challenges to crews operating in a space environment. Years of physical and psychological training, as well as in-flight medical and operational support, will equip astronauts with excellent tools to cope with the stresses of the spaceflight environment. It is not an easy job, but definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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