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NASA works to reduce risks so humans can reach Mars

NASA works to reduce risks so humans can reach Mars.

By Curtis Krueger, Times Staff Writer
Published February 18, 2008

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis will return this week from a journey to the international space station, some 200 miles above Earth. One of them, Daniel Tani, has been in orbit since October. Long-term space travel tears down the human body. Now, as NASA prepares for journeys to the moon and Mars, scientists are learning more about the dangers of space.
	[Don Morris | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo] Astronaut Alan Poindexter exercises on the space shuttle while docked at the space station on Thursday. NASA experiments are aimed at trying to adapt workouts for longer stays in space. To better understand living in space, astronauts aboard the international space station are working on several ongoing experiments, including these: [Don Morris | Times]

An undisclosed medical problem forced German astronaut Hans Schlegel to miss his first planned space walk last week.

But Schlegel was lucky. He recovered in time for Wednesday's excursion outside the space station to help swap out a cooling system.

It could be a much different picture for astronauts who travel to Mars, a treacherous 30-million-mile journey that NASA has begun to plan.

The trip there would take half a year. Along the way, astronaut's bones would shrink 1.5 percent each month, making them more fragile.

Their bodies would be exposed to radiation that could damage their DNA or cause cancer. Their hearts would weaken from the months of pumping blood inside a weightless body.

Space travel could tear down their minds, as well as their bodies.

Imagine stepping outside the space shuttle, staring back at Earth. Unlike Apollo astronauts who stood on the moon, Earth would not look like a giant, swirling-blue globe. It would look like one of the stars.

"I think going to Mars and looking back to Earth and seeing Earth as a bluish star, that's got to have some impact on you, as to how remote you are," said Don Thomas, a former NASA astronaut who traveled to space four times.

All these dangers show the challenges of NASA's plan for the future, which is to develop a spacecraft that would take Americans back to the moon as soon as 2018, and eventually on to Mars.

Julie Robinson, program scientist for the international space station, said many of these risks need to be reduced before NASA would try to send astronauts on such a daring trek.

That's why she and other scientists are working with astronauts on the space station to develop "countermeasures," or strategies for making the journey safe enough to try.

"We have a fair idea of what the risks are, and some of those risks seem too high," Robinson said.

But if new techniques can be developed to slow bone loss, keep the heart healthy and solve other ills, NASA hopes to "reduce the risks enough" to make them acceptable, she said.

Cleveland resident Dominic Prinzo is doing his part to help NASA figure it out.

The 29-year-old is spending three months in bed, with his head tilted down at a 6-degree angle. He gets up only to exercise, which he does while suspended in a harness on a vertical treadmill. The odd configuration is designed to keep the weight off his legs, so it more resembles how an astronaut would exercise in weightlessness.

Experiments like this could help astronauts get better workouts in space, which could counteract bone loss, Robinson said. And that's important because astronauts would need to be strong and fit on Mars, where there is gravity.

"I like that I'm playing my small part in a really big endeavor," Prinzo said.

Other experiments, being conducted by NASA and the European and Russian space agencies, are focused on learning more about long-term space travel. Among them:

- Scientists are analyzing food and medicine samples left for months in space to see how radiation breaks them down.

- They're examining journals kept by astronauts to better understand the psychological effects.

- They're monitoring astronauts' sleep to better understand their frequent insomnia.

- They're evaluating the cause of flashing lights that astronauts report seeing when their eyes are closed, a phenomena that may be caused by cosmic particles passing through their bodies.

Former astronaut Thomas, who now conducts educational programs for schoolchildren in the Baltimore area under a program at Towson University, believes humans will set out for the Red Planet in spite of the challenges.

In talks to students, he says: "I was able to look out my window and see the top of Mount Everest. You can look out the window and see the surface of Mars."

Curtis Krueger can be reached at ckrueger@sptimes.com or 727 893-8232.

Shuttle, station crews say teary farewell

The crews of the space shuttle and station said goodbye, then sealed the hatches between them Sunday after more than a week of working tirelessly together to deliver and install Europe's space laboratory, Columbus. Atlantis was scheduled to undock early today. Staying behind are American Peggy Whitson, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut. NASA is aiming to wrap up Atlantis' successful 13-day mission with a landing on Wednesday. Both the Kennedy Space Center and the backup landing site in California will be poised to receive Atlantis; the space agency wants the shuttle down that day to give the military enough time to destroy a damaged spy satellite. NASA already is looking ahead to the next shuttle flight to the orbiting station. Endeavour will be moved to the launch pad today in preparation for a March 11 liftoff.

Associated Press

[Last modified February 17, 2008, 20:11:33]