Space is not a very hospitable place…. Even when provided with oxygen and a stable temperature by their spacecraft, astronauts seem to sicken the longer they spend away from Earth.
A report published … by the Guy Foundation, … adds some new potential health hazards for astronauts to worry about. The report draws on several strands of emerging research to argue that long-duration spaceflight, or living on other planets, might be even more difficult for humans than had been assumed.
The main concern is the damage space travel seems to do to mitochondria, components found in almost every cell that produce the energy that powers the rest of the cell. In 2020 a group … at Queens University in Belfast, … found that spaceflight causes dramatic shifts in how mitochondria work. They suggested this could explain many health problems seen in astronauts, from immune-system difficulties to cardiovascular issues. The new report suggests astronauts face something that looks like โaccelerated ageingโ, and that this is associated with the disruption of cellular energy production.
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