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When you agree to participate in a one year space study, you lose a right to privacy. In the case of astronaut Scott Kelly, the changes his body undergoes when he spent a year at the International Space Station (ISS) were carefully analyzed by NASA and then published in a scientific journal for all to see. . Kelly submitted blood samples, saliva samples and cheek swabs. Even his shit has been subjected to scrutiny.
According to PBS reports, Scott Kelly's stool samples revealed that his gut microbiome had undergone significant but reversible changes during his stay in orbit. According to geneticist Martha Hotz Vitaterna, her intestinal bacteria contained nothing alarming "alarming or frightening", which was surely good news for NASA. She returned to normal within six months of arriving on Earth.
Even after being subjected to the harsh conditions of space, "Scott's microbiome still resembled Scott's microbiome, with just a touch of space," said Vitaterna, one of the authors of the study.
The fecal probe was a small part of a large NASA study that has just been published in the newspaper Sciencemore than three years after Kelly's return. The Twins study was based on a comparison of Kelly's test results with that of his identical twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth as a control subject.
NASA's goal was to better understand the dangers that astronauts may face during long-term missions to the Moon and Mars. The agency has gone to great lengths to get this information, including offering to pay $ 18,500 to people so that they stay in bed for two months to replicate the conditions of anti -gravité.
This also explains why NASA was willing to launch unmanned rockets into space to collect samples of Kelly's poop. On four different occasions at the ISS, Kelly used cotton swabs to capture the poo particles. When the rockets arrived to drop laboratory supplies, they came back to Earth with small tubes containing the swabs, which had to be frozen until all the samples were collected. The process was tedious and once, one of the SpaceX rockets exploded soon after its launch in 2015.
The study also revealed that his telomeres, the caps at the ends of the chromosomes, had been lying in space, probably due to regular exercise and proper nutrition, according to NASA. But when Kelly came back to Earth, they started to shorten and find their length before the space flight. The shorter telomeres correlate with aging and age-related diseases. "Although the average telomere length, overall gene expression, and microbiome modifications have returned to levels close to pre-control within six months of return to Earth, an increasing number of short telomeres have been observed. and the expression of certain genes was always disturbed, "the researchers wrote.
The researchers say more studies will be needed before sending the first human to Mars. Watch the NASA video below to find out more about what they've discovered.
[h/t PBS]
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