When the crew members of the Fram2 SpaceX mission returned to Earth, a neurologist from the Medical University of South Carolina was there to get an immediate scan of how being in space affected their brains. Mark Rosenberg, M.D., directs the Aerospace and Performance Neurology Program at MUSC. He's leading two studies on that crew. The first involves the astronauts' brains, the second their stress and sleep patterns.
More on those studies in a moment, but first, Rosenberg explained why such missions are ripe for research. "These missions that SpaceX has been offering are really an interesting opportunity to take a look at how humans respond acutely in extreme environments for a variety of reasons," Rosenberg said.
What makes them interesting from his perspective? A few things, he said, focusing on the most recent mission.
One, the crew that landed on Friday included what CBS news called "a wealthy Chinese-born bitcoin entrepreneur, a Norwegian cinematographer, a German robotics expert and an Australian adventurer." These aren't exactly your average folks, but they are different from the people normally traveling in space. "It allows us to study a population that isn't typical for astronauts," Rosenberg said.
Two, the flight took a nontraditional route. "Instead of orbiting Earth longitudinally, they actually did it latitudinally," Rosenberg said. It's the first flight with people on board that orbited the North and South Poles. That route offered both new opportunities for experiments and new risks. "There are increased hazards or exposures, radiation being one of the big ones. It's known that the radiation exposure risk is higher at the poles just based on Earth."
Three, the trip was short."It allows for us to see if people have changes to microgravity within five days as opposed to five weeks or five months that you see more with the NASA astronauts. So it's allowing us to do a more snapshot-type picture."
Now, to Rosenberg's team's research. The MUSC studies are among 22 on the Fram2 flight.
The first MUSC study is what he called a continuation of an MRI study that MUSC did with the Polaris Dawn mission. MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, uses magnets and radio waves to make detailed images of the body's tissues and organs.
"We're doing MRIs before and after flight to see if there are any changes. We know that there are changes that occur, but it's typically with NASA astronauts on flights of long duration. So one of the things we're trying to see is whether five days is enough to cause changes to the anatomy of the brain when in orbit."
The second MUSC study builds on a collaboration Rosenberg has developed with Oura, which has a smart ring that monitors sleep and physical activity. The Fram2 crew wore Oura rings.
"We're looking at stress. We're looking at their sleep architecture, skin temperature and a whole bunch of other different scores. And we're measuring them before, during and after flight. So we'll see what they looked like before and how space flight can affect their sleep, and then how long does it take for them to return back to their baseline afterwards?"
Rosenberg said that information can be put to good use in the future. "How it ties into things is if we were to look more toward colonization, for example. We wouldn't want people to go to Mars, where it's not a great environment, and find that it takes weeks and weeks and weeks for them to get back to being not sleep deprived. So the goal is to try to determine what we could devise or what strategies can we come up with to preserve their sleep the best that we can?"
Rosenberg said space research, more generally, can also benefit people on Earth. Case in point: a condition that affects astronauts, spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, is similar to an earthly condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Findings about the space condition could lead to new treatment options for people on Earth," Rosenberg said.
And the potential benefits don't end there. "Technology has been developed, from MRIs to Velcro, to primarily support space missions. But we're using it every day in our lives to improve human health. That was from technology from the 1960s. So my hope is that with this new era, we're learning a lot more. We're going to be able to develop a lot of new technologies that we can use. And ultimately, at the end of the day, we're all in this together."
Rosenberg said his space research wouldn't have been possible without the previous work of Donna Roberts, M.D., a prolific space researcher at MUSC who recently joined the International Space Station National Laboratory as the deputy chief scientist."You can't go anywhere in the world and not talk about what happens to the brain in space without her name coming up in those conversations."
