Gadgetory

when I was up there for a year I think I felt like at some point I lived my whole life up there that was former NASA astronaut scott kelly who returned to earth in march after spending 340 days on the International Space Station his year in space is a stepping stone for future missions to Mars and deep space because it's helping NASA understand a long-term spaceflight affects a human body but how does long-term spaceflight affect in mind what about the psychological challenges of being in space in short what will he take mentally to get to Mars a mission to the red planet will last two to three years that means that for two to three years astronauts will live in microgravity isolated and far away from home they won't have many comforts they won't be able to just step outside and breathe some fresh air or pick up the phone and call their loved ones and they'll be living in a high-risk environment where they might die if anything goes wrong such a stressful situation is likely to have psychological implications microgravity can add to the stresses as well and that can produce some stress and strain maneuvering around and that's McKenna's a space psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco also the way people look in microgravity sometimes they look puffy and sometimes kind of angry and so it can be a stressful issue as well one of the main reasons for Scott Kelly's year on the space station was to understand how his body change and adapting in space so on the space station while I was there was 400 different experiments and of those a lot or life science experiments you know most of those are related to understanding our physiology so we can go you know further into the solar system and tomorrow someday we already know some of the physical problems austra not space people who spend time in space experience bone loss microgravity causes muscles to shrink making astronauts weaker and less coordinated and all struts also eat less than they should and it's key to get the right nutrients to stay healthy but there's a lot we still don't know about the effects of a long space mission on the human mind for now we know that astronauts in space sometimes suffer from depression NASA astronaut John Blaha has admitted to becoming depressed onboard the Russian station Mir in the 90s Blaha said he turned to a family photo album every night to keep him going and deal with the homesickness we also know that astronauts often develop sleeping problems in space Space Station are noisy and try falling asleep when you're floating Plus because the space station zooms around the earth 16th time a day there's no real morning and night to tell your body when to be sleepy it's like feeling jet-lagged all the time often astronauts sleep less than 6 hours a day in space and lack of sleep can trigger behavioral problems we also know that conflicts can rise and on crew members and Mission Control on the ground being constrained in a relatively small space with the same people for months on end is challenging especially when these people come from different backgrounds and speak different languages well you know you're deprived of so much on earth and then you have you know all these possibilities you like your crewmates but you're you know you don't have a variety of people and things and possibilities when you're living in such a compliant closed environment for so long nASA has guidelines to deal with mental breakdowns in space you someone has severe anxiety paranoia hysteria or attempted suicide astronauts are instructed to find the person's wrists and ankles with duct tape restrain the body with bungee cords and administer tranquilizers the procedures has never been used and NASA says that no behavioral emergencies have ever been reporting you in spaceflight but there are no causes of anxiety and conflict in space during the Skylab 4 mission in 1973 astronauts got so stressed out that they turned off radio communication with the ground and spent the whole day ignoring NASA during a solute 6 mission russian cosmonauts at a dream of having to take and started obsessing over it and he started worrying about well gee what if i really did have a tooth problem here i couldn't do anything about and he just sort of obsessed about it that's neat Candice again it wasn't critical for the mission in the sense that he was sort of talked down and he was able to continue to function but it leads to the idea that for some astronauts to experience anxiety of being in the space environment also mattifies it they will perceive it as a worry about a met a physical problem so almost like a psychosomatic reaction but it's not all bad some alternates have reported a change of perspective seeing Earth from space give them a better appreciation for people and the environment so I'm originally from Italy and I moved here five years ago and I honestly think that being away from home kind of changes you somehow and you've been on the ISS for a year which is the farthest you can possible be do you think that you're in spaces change you some way yeah absolutely you know I think you know just living on that space station for so long and understanding how difficult it was to build and operate kind of inspired think that if there's something that we want to do we can do it if we put our minds to it looking out of the earth over the course of a year and seeing the impacts that our presence have on the environment especially in certain parts of Asia you know makes me feel like there's more that everyone can do including myself to make earth a better place for the future inhabitants and you know when you're when you're detached from Earth for so long you do feel a little bit more empathy for kind of all the bad stuff that goes on down here yeah I mean how as it as your year in space changed your idea about the environment and what we should do to preserve the earth well you know the atmosphere is very looks like a thin film over the surface so looks really fragile and it's what keeps us alive so it's worth protecting the psychological challenges Oscar nuts will face on a mission to Mars will be even greater on the International Space Station crew morale is kept up by sending surprise presents treats like fruits and vegetables or by arranging phone calls with favorite movie stars or sports figures astronauts can also easily keep in touch with loved ones on earth through emails and phone calls and they talk to a psychologist on a regular basis but on a mission to Mars astronauts would be more isolated than ever communication with earth would have a twenty to forty minute delay so close with friends and family are out of the question crew members also wouldn't be able to rely on Mission Control to solve emergency situations another's boredom people's schedules on International Space Station are packed up with experiments cleaning and maintenance but a journey to Mars will last much longer than the usual six-month day on the ISS some studies are simulating missions to Mars to figure out how people deal with the stress and confinement in one funded in part by the European Space Agency six men were locked up for 520 days in a fixed space ship that simulated a journey to Mars some crew members reported being depressed another one developed insomnia and the simulation didn't even include microgravity and the actual dangers of space travel on the International Space Station one of the favorite activities is to gaze out the window and look at our planet on a mission to Mars there'll be a time when our planet will look like a tiny star no one knows how people might react to that right now there's never been a human being who hasn't had some contact with the earth visually either seeing it from the moon or being on the ground or being in the water you place in a sense of being in contact while on Mars the earth will be a insignificant greenish blue dot in the heavens and that kind of earth out of you and everything that's ever been important to you being so distant and so trivial may have an effect psychologically on some of the astronauts as well so what advice would you have for Austin Austin are embarking on a journey to Mars you mean like a three-year journey you know a year is a really long time so I would say you know try to keep that in perspective manage your energy and fatigue during the course of your time getting there and then on the surface one thing I always tried to think about is that even on the last day of maybe even two being there for a year I would have to be able to respond to an emergency situation the same as if it was my first day so I would suggest to them pace yourselves would you ever want to go to Mars I would but it's easy for me to say that knowing that I probably won't be able to but I think in a few years if someone said hey we got a trip to Mars would you like to go I'd probably volunteer now I wouldn't go on that one-way trip to Mars I think those people are I don't know what's the right word but I think you know having spent a year on the space station I can't imagine spending the rest of my life in an environment like that where you can't go out and get fresh air you'd want to come back absolutely I think anyone they send there if you send someone and they're gonna stay there forever they're gonna have a change of heart at some point