Astronauts may not be able to stomach Mars trip

Astronauts may not be able to stomach Mars trip

News:

1. According to a new NASA-funded study it was revealed that travelling long distances in space could pose health risks for astronauts.

Important Facts:

2. The study raises concerns that astronauts would be at high risk of developing tumours in their stomach and colon and it could destroy astronaut’s guts.
3. It follows previous studies that suggested such journeys could do significant damage to people’s brains and might age them prematurely.

Reasons for such damage:

• Heavy ions such as iron and silicon are damaging because of their greater mass compared to no-mass photons such as x-rays and gamma-rays prevalent on earth as well as low mass protons in outer space.
• While short trips, like the times astronauts travelled to the Moon, may not expose them to this level of damage, the real concern is lasting injury from a long trip such as a Mars or other deep space missions which would be much longer.
• The GI tract is in a continuous state of self-renewal and replacement. Any disturbance of this replacement mechanism leads to malfunctioning of physiologic processes such as nutrient absorption and starts pathologic processes such as cancer.
• Scientists now believe that the same problems could apply to other organs and that further work needs to be done to understand the full damage that deep space travel might do to human bodies.