We were doing something called telemedicine, where we were using the ultrasound. One interesting application of this ultrasound is the possibility that you could possibly use it to measure critical bone areas during a long space mission and track if you're losing bone in these areas. On Earth, when they check you for bone loss, you get in this big machine. It's the size of a room and it's got a platform with an x-ray that scans your whole body and in critical areas and it takes a while and it just wouldn't be practical to have a machine like that in space.
In my space journey, I felt vulnerable because we did not have anyone with medical background. When we make that big trip to Mars, we would need a doctor on board.
Development of space will improve life on Earth. Access to space is important for agriculture, humanitarian efforts, communications, and navigation.
This is a really big space station. We do a lot of various kinds of work here, different kinds of science experiments; we have over 400 different experiments going on at any one time in different areas, from basic science research to medical technology, that hopefully will benefit more people on Earth.
Our bodies are the subject of many experiments, but these experiments on the space station sometimes take years because in order for a scientist to get 10 data points, that can take six or seven years.
It's such a long mission and we get to spend so much time in space... we're doing such exciting research. And I don't want to overemphasize the life science research, but as a physician the life science research that we're doing is extremely exciting.
The 20-G Centrifuge is our largest facility certified for use by humans. Its capabilities make it a unique NASA resource and a very versatile research tool that is ideal for developing health-maintenance activities for astronauts.
Mars missions will require up to three years in reduced gravity, so we need to make sure astronauts can not only survive but thrive as they move outward to explore this new world.
Research into manned spaceflight is shifting from low-Earth orbit to destinations much further away, like Mars and the asteroid belt. But society will have to invent many new technologies before it can plausibly send people to those distances.
If we go into space, we need enhancements that handle radiation and osteoporosis... or else we're dead. So what seems like an enhancement in one generation becomes life and death in another generation.
Sex in space is not just a good idea, it's survival.
In space, you need to exercise your heart since it's not pumping blood around at the same rate.
People do really well on space missions, but it's the physiological, the medical stuff, the stuff like radiation, loss of bone mass and muscle mass and density. It's those things that we need to figure out.
We're going to be focusing our science on things that will take us farther and longer into space. For many of those experiments, the crew members are human guinea pigs, which is fine; that's part of my job. I don't mind being a human guinea pig.
Basically, most good science in space flight has to do with the behavior of the human body in space. That is where we are lacking info, and where info can only be obtained by flying in space.
One of the things that happens in space is that there is a fluid shift. You get a lot of extra pressure, and it fills your sinuses, and the horseradish is a miracle worker for cleaning that out.
We want people to continue learning new things about what space does to the human body. It's important for us to understand that and make sure when we get ready to fly to Mars that we are ready for what we're going to be exposed to.
The life expectancy of people going to Mars may be decreased by the higher level of radiation that they receive.
There's a lot of interest from the medical community on how things develop in microgravity, and the hope, later, that is expected to apply to what the changes are in humans as well.
If we're going to go farther from Earth, to Mars or somewhere else someday, we have to have a good understanding of the psychological impact on people. And not only psychologically, but how it affects their cognition. We're doing a lot of research on my cognitive abilities.
I'd like to be proven wrong on the difficulty of handling the medical side-effects of long term exposure to deep space (both microgravity induced illnesses and radiation damage).
The main goal of the International Space Station is to work on peaceful projects. In space, we're all people from Earth.
The ability of the humans to not only function in space but be very functional when they arrive at their destination, those are the kinds of things we're learning from the science. Fuel transfer technologies and all the things we can learn about the space environment are all valuable to us for pressing on out.
There's a world of insights to be gained into human health and disease by understanding how gravity and space radiation influence biology.
Sometimes astronauts feel a little ill or get minor scrapes. I trained as a crew medical officer to do basic treatment.
