Since the early days of the Space Race in the 1950s and ‘60s, humans have continued to take “giant leaps” toward expanding and extending our presence in space. Indeed, NASA has ambitions to return astronauts to the Moon with the future lunar-orbiting Gateway outpost, the Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface and onward to deep space, and near-Earth Asteroid and Mars missions planned for the next two decades. In addition, with projected advancements in commercial spaceflight, the need to understand, counteract, and mitigate the health risks associated with spending time in space – including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases – has become vitally important.

Spaceflight and extraterrestrial environments introduce physiological stressors not typically encountered on Earth, such as confinement, disrupted sleep patterns, microgravity, and ionizing radiation, all of which have short- and long-term effects on human health that remain largely unknown. Studies of astronauts who flew both short- and long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have shown that spaceflight is associated with various adverse health effects including altered immune responses; muscle atrophy (loss of muscle tissue); neuro-vestibular impairment; vision, cognitive, and behavioral alterations; and adverse cardiovascular events (heart attacks, arrhythmia, heart failure). Astronauts on the ISS remain in low Earth orbit (LEO) and experience microgravity but retain some protection, from Earth’s electromagnetic field, against space radiation. Such protection will be lost during extended deep space missions. Additionally, genetic variability in susceptibility to disease and other individual risk factors such as age, sex, and lifestyle (e.g. sleep, diet) need to be considered as modifiers of the overall risks of life in space.

Our labs at Mount Sinai’s CVRI assist NASA in answering critical questions about how spaceflight stressors alter cardiovascular, neurocognitive, immune system, and cancer risks for planned long and deep space missions. Such studies include analyzing blood samples obtained from NASA astronauts; investigating animals exposed to space travel-associated environmental stressors in the laboratory, including space-type radiation at Brookhaven National Labs; and fabricating bioengineered tissues and organoids from human stem cells for testing on Earth and on the ISS. By unravelling individual genetic susceptibilities, defining space-related risks’ underlying molecular mechanisms, and identifying sub-clinical predictive biomarkers, we aim to pioneer new tools that can prevent and reduce health risks before, during, and after deep space missions. Moreover, because the effects of time in space resemble an accelerated aging process on Earth, our work on the health risks of space flight has significant potential to improve health for all of humankind. Our mechanistic insights into degenerative disease processes could provide the foundation for developing measures to prevent age-related cardiovascular and cancer morbidity and mortality or to improve outcomes following cancer radiotherapy as well as accidental and occupational radiation exposures.