Houston’s Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) will launch six more space experiments this spring. These tests will examine how space travel affects numerous facets of human health and performance. The project is being carried out in collaboration with WITH and CalTeach. The biomedical research will explore how space travel affects everything from memory to motion sickness. This will be done during a 10-day stay on the International Space Station during the Ax-2 mission Axiom Space.
Pilot John Shoffner, Commander Peggy Whitson, mission specialists Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni make up the four-member crew of the Ax-2 mission. The team consists of people who will make history. This includes the first female commander of a private space crew and the first Saudi astronauts to the ISS. The executive director of TRISH and professor at the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine is Dr. Dorit Donoviel. Dorit says the findings add to their understanding of how the human body and mind adapt to the challenges of space travel. He added that it would be helpful to prepare future astronauts to stay safe and healthy during longer missions.
Researchers from TRISH, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Baylor College of Medicine have all helped create the six projects that will be carried out aboard the mission. They want to evaluate a range of space-related issues. These problems include changes to the eyes, brain, inner ears, and eye responses to movement. Other problems are the genetic consequences of space travel.
The study will also look at astronauts’ sleep, personality, health history, team dynamics, immune-related symptoms and sensorimotor skills. The latter will examine how changes in space affect an astronaut’s ability to stand on the moon, balance and exercise full bodily control.
Some of this data will be included in TRISH’s Improving eXploration Platforms and ANAlog Definition (EXPAND) program. The database is intended to help the program improve human health during commercial space missions.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will be used to launch Axiom’s second all-private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Axiom also plans to build the first-ever commercial space station.
This coming summer, TRISH will launch nine experiments as part of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission. Polaris Dawn’s study is intended to complement the study conducted on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 all-civilian orbital mission in 2021, which was funded by TRISH.