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Human hibernation is a real possibility - this is how it might work

Mounting evidence suggests that humans may have the biological hardware to benefit from some aspects of hibernation. Switching on these mechanisms could treat cardiac arrest, boost longevity and help people travel further into space

By Alex Wilkins

11 October 2022

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Humans may retain the biological mechanisms to trigger aspects of hibernation

Antonio Sortino

IF YOU could rewind the evolutionary clock millions of years, you might discover that your ancestors had a remarkable trait. It wouldn’t be obvious at first. But in certain conditions – if food were scarce or there were a cold snap – it is possible that their eyes would grow heavy and their bodies begin to slow until, eventually, they switched off entirely. They would be hibernating.

In this low-energy state, today’s hibernators can fend off a remarkable array of threats, from the inside and out. Extreme cold and famine are the obvious ones, but hibernation also has the power to combat conditions that plague modern humans, including Alzheimer’s disease , stroke and heart attack. It could even hold the key to longevity and colonising space. No wonder some researchers are keen to reinstate what might have been our long-lost superpower.

The idea that ancient humans could hibernate may seem far-fetched, but mounting evidence suggests that many non-hibernating mammals retain an ability to enter reduced-energy states, including through dormant brain-signaling pathways that slow metabolism. “The distribution of hibernating species on the tree of mammals makes the likely conclusion that the common ancestor of all mammals was a hibernator,” says Sandy Martin at the University of Colorado. “It’s possible we all have the genetic hardware.”

It remains to be seen whether any underlying circuitry can be fired up enough to bestow us with some of hibernation’s protective properties. But the potential spoils are too great not to try.

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Humans might be able to hibernate during space travel.

Suspended animation might one day be possible for people

a computer illustrated image showing people sleeping in hibernation pods on a spaceship

In fictional depictions of suspended animation, people travel through space in a frozen state, waking up only after they have reached their destination.

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By Tina Hesman Saey

May 24, 2023 at 6:30 am

A teenager joins a line of people boarding a spaceship. Once on board, she approaches a bed, crawls in, closes the lid and falls asleep. Her body is frozen for a trip to a planet several light-years from Earth. A few years later she wakes up, still the same age. This ability to put her life on pause while asleep is called “suspended animation.”

Scenes like this are a staple of science fiction. There’s plenty of other ways that suspended animation has touched our imagination, too. There’s Captain America, for instance, who survived nearly 70 years frozen in ice. And Han Solo was frozen in carbonite in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back . The Mandalorian ’s main character brings in some of his bounties cold, too.

All of these stories have something in common. People enter an unconscious state in which they can survive for a long time.

Nothing like this is yet possible in the real world, at least for us humans. But some animals and birds have their own forms of suspended animation: They hibernate. This might hold some lessons for how to put astronauts of the future into hibernation for long space flights. But for really long journeys, a deep freeze might be the best option.

Beyond sleep

“I think this is realistic,” says Katharine Grabek. She’s a biologist who co-founded a company called Fauna Bio based in Emeryville, Calif. “I think it would be done by … making ourselves as similar as we can to a hibernator.”

Hibernation may look like a deep form of sleep, but it’s not sleep. As an animal hibernates, it chills its body and slows its heart rate and breathing. Metabolism also slows. To do this, an animal must turn on and off certain genes when they hibernate. Those genes do things like controlling whether an animal burns sugars or fats for fuel. Other genes are involved in keeping muscles strong.  

Humans have many of these same genes. We don’t use them to hibernate. But turning some of these genes on or off might allow humans to do something similar to hibernation, Grabek says. Her company studies these genes and looks for drugs that can control them. Such drugs might allow people to hibernate without being really cold, she says.

Some animals’ body temperatures drop below freezing when they hibernate. Humans may not survive that chill, says John Bradford. He is the chief executive officer of SpaceWorks, a company in Atlanta, Ga. Bradford once proposed a space capsule where astronauts could hibernate. He thinks NASA could use such a capsule to send people to Mars.

Since a person probably wouldn’t survive their body temperature dropping below freezing, like a ground squirrel, Bradford suggests that people might hibernate like bears.  

Black bears cut their metabolism by 75 percent when they hibernate. But their bodies stay somewhat warm. Normal body temperature for a black bear is 37.7° Celsius to 38.3 °C (100° Fahrenheit to 101 °F). During hibernation, their body temperature stays above 31 °C (88 °F).

Hibernating humans might have to lower their body temperature only a few degrees. “We can probably keep someone in this state very safely for about two weeks,” Bradford says.

If people are like bears, hibernation may help keep bones and muscles strong. That is important in space. Bones and muscles tend to break down in low gravity. Hibernation could cut the amount of food, water and oxygen that crews need. And it could save people from the inevitable boredom of long trips in space, Bradford says.

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The deep freeze

But hibernation may not be enough to get people through decades-long trips. That’s because even champion hibernators have to rouse sometimes. Most animals come out of hibernation after a few months, Grabek says.

Making people colder might slow their metabolism even more than regular hibernation. But what if you went really cold? Or even frozen? Wood frogs in the Arctic freeze solid for the winter. They thaw out again in spring. Could they be a model for humans wanting to travel the stars?

Shannon Tessier is a cryobiologist. That is a scientist who studies the effect of extremely low temperatures on living organisms. She is looking for a way to freeze human organs for transplants. She works at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Freezing is usually bad for organs, she says. That’s because ice crystals can rip open cells. Wood frogs can stand freezing because they have ways of preventing ice crystals from forming.

Tessier and her colleagues, though, worked out a way to supercool human livers to freezing temperatures without ice crystals forming. Right now, most organs can only be kept on ice for about 12 hours. But the supercooled livers could be stored for 27 hours . The researchers reported the achievement in 2020 in Nature Protocols . But more research is still needed. Tessier doesn’t yet know if the thawed liver will work if transplanted into a person.

Plus, freezing may not be enough for long-term space travel, she says. Wood frogs can only stay frozen for a few months. Traveling to another solar system would take many years.

In true suspended animation, all metabolism in the body would stop. One way to make that happen is flash freezing to –140 °C (–220 °F). The ultralow temperature turns tissues to glass. That process is called vitrification.

Human embryos are stored this way by quickly freezing in liquid nitrogen. “We haven’t achieved that with a whole human organ,” Tessier notes. And you couldn’t dunk a whole person in a vat of liquid nitrogen. It would kill them.

Whole bodies would need to freeze from the inside out as fast as from the outside in, she says. And they would need to rewarm just as quickly. “We don’t have the science … to do that in a way that is not damaging,” she says.

Maybe someday humans on Earth will find our own carbonite. Then we might be able to travel as frozen cargo to a galaxy far, far away.

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A bear waking up from hibernation

Hibernation artificially triggered in potential space travel breakthrough

If discovery is feasible in humans it could be used to send astronauts into suspended animation, say scientists

In science fiction, space crews are often spared the boredom and inconvenience of long-distance space travel by being placed into a state of suspended animation. Now this goal may have come a step closer after scientists showed that hibernation can be artificially triggered in rodents using ultrasonic pulses.

The advance is seen as significant because the technique was effective in rats – animals that do not naturally hibernate. This raises the prospect that humans may also retain a vestigial hibernation circuit in the brain that could be artificially reactivated.

“If this proves feasible in humans, we could envision astronauts wearing a helmet-like device designed to target the hypothalamus region for inducing a hypothermia and hypometabolism state,” said Hong Chen , an associate professor at Washington University in St Louis, who led the work.

The team first identified a specific group of neurons in a deep brain region called the hypothalamus preoptic area, which were found to be involved in regulating body temperature and metabolism during hibernation. They showed that, in mice, these neurons could be artificially activated using ultrasound, delivered non-invasively through a helmet.

When stimulated, the mice showed a drop in body temperature of about 3C for about one hour. The mice’s metabolism also shifted from using both carbohydrates and fat for energy to only fat, a key feature of torpor, and their heart rates fell by about 47%, all while at room temperature.

The scientists also developed an automatic closed-loop feedback system that delivered an ultrasound pulse to keep the mice in the induced torpor if they showed signs of warming up. This allowed the mice to be kept at 33C in the hibernation-like state for 24 hours. When the ultrasound system was switched off, they woke up again.

The experiments, described in the journal Nature Metabolism , showed that the same device worked in rats, which had a 1C drop in core body temperature when the same brain region was targeted. Chen said the result was “surprising and fascinating” and the team planned to test the technique in larger animals.

In humans, inducing a torpor-like state has potential medical applications, with some suggesting that slowing down metabolism could buy critical time for treating life-threatening conditions such as heart attack and stroke. “By extending the window for medical intervention, this technique offers promising prospects for improving patients’ chances of survival,” said Chen. “Additionally, the non-invasive nature of the technique opens the possibility of developing wearable ultrasound devices, such as helmets, for easy access in emergency situations.”

Prof Martin Jastroch, of Stockholm University, who was not involved in the research, described the work as a breakthrough. “Everything they see recapitulates what you see in nature,” he said.

“They can also do this in rats, which is quite exciting,” he added, saying that “the chance is quite high” the same technique would, theoretically, work in humans. “We might have some residual abilities there. Before this paper no one was even thinking of how you could experiment with that in safe manner.”

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A new hibernation study is bad news for future space travelers

Hibernating animals could help us understand how long astronauts could last in space.

Astronaut lying down

Imagine you’re an astronaut taking a trip into outer space. Only it’s not a short jaunt to the Moon . Instead, your trip will last 120 years.

To get there you’d need to drastically reduce your body’s metabolic activities and needs. Hollywood sci-fi movies often imagine a future where humans are capable of artificially inducing hibernation to survive the trip. But is that really possible?

A recent study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B analyzes how much energy different mammals save during hibernation. The findings suggest that, metabolically speaking, humans probably won’t survive a decades-long journey in space.

What’s new — In the new study, scientists reached two surprising conclusions about how hibernating animals save energy.

First: Smaller hibernating mammals tend to save, on average, far more energy compared to larger animals. For example, the tiny, 45-gram marsupial known as monito del monte — which could fit in the palm of your hand — saves 76 percent of its energy during hibernation compared to its usual active state.

On the other hand, a 400-pound grizzly bear actually has negative energy savings of 124 percent. In other words: Most larger bears are not saving energy during hibernation, but losing it.

Even for a smaller bear weighing 75 kilograms — 165 pounds — the energy savings of hibernation are zero compared to the bear’s normal sleeping state. Roberto Nespolo , the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Universidad Austral de Chile, tells Inverse that smaller animals need to burn more energy to maintain body temperatures in their normal active or sleeping state.

But during hibernation, the energy consumption — per gram — is constant at any bodily size. In other words, a hibernating bat has the same metabolism as a hibernating bear 20,000 times its size.

Grizzly bear in the wild close-up

Bears like the grizzly bear pictured here don’t actually save energy during hibernation, unlike smaller hibernating rodents or bats.

“So that’s why the benefits of turning off the switch of metabolism are greater in small animals and becomes approximately zero at the size of a small bear,” Nespolo says.

Therefore, it makes sense that most hibernating creatures — like bats or rodents — tend to be on the smaller side. After all, the only known hibernator weighing more than 45 pounds is the bear, though the study suggests mother bears feeding their cubs gain some benefits from hibernation.

Why it matters — But why does the amount of energy saved during animal hibernation concern humans who obviously don’t hibernate?

This brings us back to long-term space travel and its limitations. As the study implies, artificially-induced hibernation in humans, such as in the hypothetical astronaut scenario, probably doesn’t save more energy versus regular sleep.

“Humans are simply too large, so the benefits of hibernation are little — as in bears — if we think just on energy savings,” Nespolo says.

While small mammals like the brown bat or the pigmy possum can reduce their normal energy levels up to 98 percent during hibernation, the same kind of energy savings simply would not be possible in humans. So small mammals can easily get by on their body’s stored energy reserves in fat and lean mass — muscles — during hibernation, but humans would not necessarily be able to do the same.

Nespolo adds, “I get this question very often. The short answer is that I think it is not possible.”

But even if you could artificially induce hibernation in humans in a way that makes sense from an energy perspective, a decades-long space journey is still probably out of the question. According to the study, you would need 6.3 grams of fat each day to hibernate in space, adding up to 450 pounds for a 90-year journey. Plus, there are also ethical problems concerning potential research on hibernation in humans.

“Who will be the volunteer for testing a drug, genetic modification, or a surgery for inducing hibernation?” says Nespolo.

Space pods for hibernation

Sci-fi movies often imagine artificially inducing hibernation in humans, where they make long voyages in space pods. But metabolic limitations may prevent astronauts from making the trip.

How they made the discovery — There have been several studies in recent years explaining the metabolic processes that enable animals to survive hibernation . But until now, it’s been hard to calculate the average energy savings of mammals during their slumber.

Researchers in this study analyzed several existing studies on hibernating animals, comparing the daily energy consumption of active animals to the average energy used during hibernation. Afterward, they calculated the energy savings of different animals, ranging from smaller animals like the mouse-eared bat to bigger animals like grizzly bears.

Calculating the long-term average energy reduction during hibernation would be useful to determine “how long hypothetical astronauts will last in the space, or the limiting size at which hibernation becomes inefficient,” the researchers in the study wrote.

What’s next — The findings also raise other unanswered questions that scientists will be keen to explore in future studies.

“Our results also posit the intriguing question of why a cell of a hibernating bat has a similar metabolism of a cell of a hibernating bear — an animal that is 20,000 times larger,” write the researchers in the study.

But according to other recent research , rising temperatures due to global warming might change bear hibernation as we know it. Scientists may need to act fast if they want to study the hibernation of large mammals like bears — and perhaps achieve hibernation-like slumber in humans, too.

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Hi-tech pods that allow human beings to hibernate for long-distance space travel are about to become a reality

Staying alive.

On Oct. 7, 2006, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi left a barbecue on Mt. Rokko in western Japan, deciding to walk down the mountain rather than taking a cable car with his friends. He lost his way, slipped, broke his pelvis and, with nobody around to help, eventually lost consciousness. Twenty-four days later, a passing climber found Uchikoshi. His body temperature had fallen to 22 degrees Celsius (normal is around 37), his pulse was barely discernable, and his metabolism was almost at a standstill. But despite multiple organ failures and significant blood loss, with no food nor water, he survived somehow, and fully recovered.

Uchikoshi was declared the first documented case of human hibernation. His story instantly drew the attention of the medical community, which hoped it would give rise to new therapies.

Among those interested was John A. Bradford, president of Spaceworks, a US company developing technologies for space exploration based in Atlanta, Georgia. Bradford, however, didn’t want to develop treatments for medical conditions; he wanted to find a way to hibernate crews on long-distance spaceflights.

“I’m a big science fiction fan, so it was a little bit about making science fiction a reality,” says Bradford. “But first and foremost, I’m a space engineer working with manned missions to Mars and other destinations within our solar system on my mind. And from that perspective, human stasis makes a lot of sense.” If the crew is asleep, that makes reduces amount of food and life support systems needed, thus bringing down overall ship mass—and costs—significantly.

Bradford and his team focused their efforts on “therapeutic hypothermia”, a well-established procedure used in hospitals all over the world, performed on thousands of patients to treat cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injury. It amounts to slowly cooling the body to 32-34 C, usually one degree per hour, which slows down heart rate and lowers blood pressure to give medical teams more time to work on treating acute heart and brain issues. Typically, a patient stays in stasis for 2-4 days, though there have been instances where doctors chose to keep their patient in this state for as long as two weeks—without any complications. And the Uchikoshi case showed it’s possible to survive an even longer cooling procedure.

“Our goal is to get from days and weeks to months,” says Bradford, who says the medical equipment used for therapeutic hypothermia can easily be automated and made space-ready. It’s already small, low-powered, easy to use, and portable enough to be carried in ambulances.

Spaceworks’ stasis chamber will probably look much like they usually do in science fiction movies—with a few key differences. “Personal stasis pods have some advantages. You can control everyone’s ambient temperature individually. They also come in handy in case of breakdown or an emergency like pathogen,” says Bradford. But that sort of design would add lots of weight to the spaceship. That’s why Spaceworks’ engineers are leaning toward an open, shared stasis chamber. “There would be some robotic arms and monitoring systems taking care of [the passengers]. They’d have small transnasal tubes for the cooling and some warming systems as well, to bring them back from stasis,” says Bradford.

An artist’s rendering of what Spaceworks’ human stasis pods would look like.

The real-world stasis will also differ from Hollywood visions in that the crew won’t sleep through the whole flight. Spaceworks’ team has interviewed several medical experts and most of them agree that shorter, repeat cycles of going in and out of stasis would be safer than a single, long-term cycle. One reason is that would ensure one crewmember would always be awake as a caretaker, taking his or her watch monitoring the spaceship’s systems and responding to emergencies. “So, for the near term—the next 20, 30, 40 years—we can work with something like two weeks’ stasis capability,” says Bradford.

But there are a few obstacles to overcome. Our bodies are not designed for low-gravity environments: Bones and muscles, relieved from their usual duty of supporting our weight, gradually lose mass up to the point where people become partially crippled. The heart, designed to pump blood up to the brain against the gravity, does its job a bit too well in space. That’s why astronauts suffer from increased intracranial blood pressure, which leads to vision impairment. One solution would be to build a spaceship with artificial gravity, but that’s probably prohibitively costly. Another is to make sure the crew exercises a lot, like those onboard the International Space Station do today. But a crew wouldn’t be able to exercise while in the stasis. Or would they?

“We have ideas how to exercise them,” says Bradford. One is called “neuromuscular electrical stimulation,” which entails sending small electrical impulses through the body, triggering muscles to contract. “There are very promising results in using this technique on comatose patients to prevent muscle atrophy,” Bradford says. In space, that could be accompanied by administering drugs to mitigate the effects of microgravity on bone mass.

As for increased intracranial pressure, therapeutic hypothermia is specifically used today as a countermeasure to that exact condition.

Spaceworks wants to start animal testing in 2018, then proceed to tests with healthy human subjects and, possibly, perform experiments onboard the ISS. But the team’s vision goes much further than just flying to Mars, or even to the Jupiter system. They are already thinking about how to support hundreds of passengers on an interstellar mission. Bradford believes it’s realistic to imagine a system that brings core body temperature down by a few degrees, metabolic rate by 50% to 70%, and extends the stasis period from weeks to months.

An artist's rendering of what Spaceworks' human stasis pods would look like.

But what about those cryo-chambers in Hollywood’s vision of interstellar travel, that let space voyagers sleep for hundreds of years? After all, real deep space travel will take a least dozens of years, if not hundreds and thousands, right?

Well, Hollywood got it all wrong. The reality is way crazier.

“Our way to colonize the universe is open, and we don’t need fancy things defying known physics to do this,” says John Ellis, a physicist working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. As he told me at a conference back in 2015:

Einstein’s relativity makes that perfectly possible. Let’s take Alpha Centauri, a little more than 4.3 light years away from us. If only we could accelerate a spaceship to, say, 0.8 the speed of light, the time dilation would really kick in. The journey would last more than five years, as measured by clocks on Earth, but only few months, as measured by clocks onboard the spaceship. And the journey will get shorter for the crew, the closer they get to the speed of light. A few months of flight is all the future astronauts will need.

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How Astronaut Hibernation for Deep-Space Travel Works (Infographic)

Infographic: How hibernation could aid astronauts on long space flights.

Space trips to the other planets would require months of travel through the vacuum of space. Maintaining the crew’s health is a vital concern. If the crew could be induced to hibernate, the problems of survival become easier to solve.

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The Debrief

Human Hibernation for Space Travel is Possible, But Your Body Doesn’t Like It

Crewed missions into space are complicated. Humans need a lot of things to stay alive on long voyages. Food, water, and air aside, keeping the mind and body occupied requires a lot of room and materials, and while crossword puzzles can keep you busy, they are not enough for prolonged periods. What if we could simply place the crew into a human hibernation state, and they could sleep their way through the solar system? The idea seems logical, but the human body isn’t exactly built for it.

Background: Human Hibernation for Space Travel

Developing the technology to travel quickly through space is becoming increasingly important as our species has its eyes on Mars and beyond. While the latest developments in propulsion may shorten the time it takes to reach other planets in our solar system, we are nowhere near reaching science-fiction level lightspeed. This makes outer space a vast place where travel between two points can take months, years, and even decades. Moving beyond our solar system, we are talking about trips that last tens of thousands of years at the minimum. 

Long-term missions would require enormous amounts of supplies and room to keep the crew from going stir-crazy. Moreover, the long-term effects of cosmic radiation and zero gravity can cause some  pretty severe health problems . It is only reasonable that  NASA  and the  European Space Agency  have studied inducing hibernation on more extended space missions, suggesting that such a method would reduce the resources needed to keep the crew alive, and shield them from some of the natural hazards of space travel.

human hibernation

Analysis: The Biggest Flaw for Human Hibernation

“The basic idea of putting astronauts into long-duration hibernation is actually not so crazy: a broadly comparable method has been tested and applied as therapy in critical care trauma patients and those due to undergo major surgeries for more than two decades. Most major medical centres have protocols for inducing hypothermia in patients to reduce their metabolism to basically gain time, keeping patients in a better shape than they otherwise would be,” the ESA’s SciSpacE Team Leader Jennifer Ngo-Anh  said  in 2019. “For a while now hibernation has been proposed as a  game-changing tool for human space travel . If we were able to reduce an astronaut’s basic metabolic rate by 75% – similar to what we can observe in nature with large hibernating animals such as certain bears – we could end up with substantial mass and cost savings, making long-duration exploration missions more feasible.”

The issue is technology. We don’t know how to overcome millions of years of evolution. Humans do not hibernate, and when we try, our genetics kick in and start trying to wake us up. Currently, controlled hibernation works by cooling the body down to a near hypothermic state. Too warm, and it doesn’t work. Too cold, and the body begins to shut down. Cool someone down too quickly, and they start to shiver, which ends up burning calories. Hitting the sweet spot, which can vary depending on the person, can slow their body’s metabolism right down.

Humans can  survive  in a controlled hibernation for less than a week, and then bad stuff starts to happen. In studies done on rats, the lining of their bowels begins to break down after about 12 days, and they go into sepsis. Humans would also suffer a similar fate eventually. Moreover, any slight alteration in temperature could trigger the body’s natural response to cold, like shivering, and our body fights back and will struggle to wake us up. Hibernation also doesn’t stop the body totally, so any extended mission would require those sleeping humans to either put on serious fat reserves ahead of time or be tube fed while they sleep.

Building “sleeping pods” and crew areas is the simple part, but overcoming the body’s natural desire to not sleep for months at a time is very difficult. According to the ESA’s study, some future drug would have to be developed that will induce a state of hibernation, otherwise known as “topor.” Though there has been  some promising research , this miracle human hibernation drug does not yet exist. Moreover, it would also have to protect the human body from falling in and out of hibernation, or worse, having your body go septic. 

Cool space drugs aside, what if an astronaut needs to be revived quickly? Could the lingering effects of the drug as it wears off cause other problems in decision making? Moreover, the ship itself would have to run automatically. If something goes wrong with the onboard computer system, the sleeping astronauts could spend eternity in their pods-turned-coffins.

Outlook: “I Wanna’ Be Sedated…”

Artificial hibernation is not impossible. However, many technological hurdles need to be overcome. Much like future propulsion systems, the theories are sound, but creating actionable outcomes are far from a reality.

plasma precipitation

Look: New Mapping Effort Reveals Where “Plasma Rains” Are Bombarding This Nearby Planet

While we look to the stars and our future among them, our species must reflect upon the fact that it is never really about the destination but the journey itself. The problem is that some of those journeys are just way too long. Being locked in a tiny spaceship with months or even years of travel time, it goes without saying that the Ramones might be right about this one. 

Follow MJ Banias on Twitter @mjbanias .

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram , to weigh in and share your thoughts. You can also get all the latest  news and exciting feature content from The Debrief on Flipboard , and Pinterest . And subscribe to The Debrief YouTube Channel to check out all of The Debrief’s exciting original shows: The Official Debrief Podcast with Michael Mataluni – DEBRIEFED: Digging Deeper with Cristina Gomez – Rebelliously Curious with Chrissy Newton

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February 29, 2024

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With space travel comes motion sickness. These engineers want to help

by Daniel Strain, Nicholas Goda, University of Colorado at Boulder

With space travel comes motion sickness. These engineers want to help

In a corner room of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at CU Boulder, Torin Clark is about to go for a ride.

The associate professor straps himself into what looks like an intimidating dentist's chair perched on metal scaffolding, which, in turn, rests on a circular base. The whole set up resembles a carnival attraction.

Which, in a way, it is.

"Torin, are you ready to start?" calls out graduate student Taylor Lonner from in front of a monitor displaying several views of Clark. "I'm going to go to 5 r.p.m. over two minutes."

Clark gives a thumbs up and begins to spin—first slowly, then faster and faster. The chair whips in circles around the room, creating a centrifugal force that forces his body back into the headrest.

Once the machine slows down and Clark is back on solid ground, he seems a little wobbly but in otherwise good spirits.

"It basically feels like a gravitron," he says, referring to the spinning, nausea-inducing rides that became a staple of county fairs in the 1980s.

The team from the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences is using this machine as one step in an experiment that seeks to recreate an experience that few people ever have: The shock of going from one gravity environment, like space, to another, like the surface of Earth. In particular, the group is tackling what happens when astronauts return home, landing in their spacecrafts in the middle of a choppy ocean.

Disorientation and motion sickness have long been an underappreciated reality of space exploration, Lonner said. Surveys suggest that a majority of astronauts and cosmonauts have gotten sick during water landings—a relatively minor condition that could become dangerous if nauseous crew members suddenly have to respond to a disaster.

Addressing such motion sickness will become increasingly important as more people travel into space, and stay there for long, Lonner said. In recent lab experiments , the team discovered that virtual reality goggles might help keep astronauts grounded when they splash down in the ocean. This technology can provide people with calming images of a landscape to gaze at, similar to watching the horizon from the deck of a boat.

The team presented its results this month at NASA's annual Human Research Program Investigators' Workshop in Galveston, Texas.

"We're increasing this whole bubble of space exploration," Lonner said. "But people aren't going to want to do that if they're just going to be miserable when they get to microgravity and when they return to Earth."

Adrift at sea

For the aerospace engineer , the question is a personal one—she can't so much as crack a book open during car rides without getting queasy. According to one hypothesis, motion sickness like hers arises from a sort of mismatch between the body and brain.

"When you're in a moving environment, your body senses your surroundings, but your brain also holds an expectation for what you should be sensing based on your past experiences," Lonner said. "When those two things disagree for an extended period of time, you get motion sick."

Unfortunately for astronauts, space is full of those kinds of contradictions.

When humans first break free of Earth's atmosphere, for example, their brains expect their bodies to experience a downward tug from gravity—conditions that don't exist in space. As a result, roughly 60% to 80% of space travelers have experienced what scientists call "space motion sickness," which can last for a few days or even longer. (Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov holds the dubious honor of being the first human to vomit in space when he lost his lunch inside the Vostok 2 spacecraft).

In separate research, Clark and his colleagues are exploring whether space explorers can reduce space motion sickness through simple exercises, such as careful tilts of the head.

But icky feelings may also emerge when astronauts come back to Earth. NASA is planning to send humans to the moon this decade aboard the Orion or Dragon spacecrafts. When Orion, in particular, returns to Earth, it will likely plop into the ocean somewhere off the coast of California. There, astronauts may bob up and down in the waves for as long as an hour while they wait for rescue.

It's not a pretty picture, Lonner said, "If you look at Orion and Dragon, there are only a few porthole windows that really aren't sufficient for giving astronauts a fixed view of Earth."

Walk in the forest

Back at CU Boulder, in a lab down the hall from the human centrifuge, Clark steps into a different machine.

The metal cube painted blue is about the size of a small bedroom. It previously resided at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and is so big that the team had to bring it into the building in pieces, then put it back together on site.

Once Clark secures himself to a chair inside and shuts the door, the massive device rumbles to life and begins to move, sliding along a track on the floor. It swishes in a straight line from one end of the room to the other for several minutes.

"You feel like you're getting rocked back and forth," Clark says.

In fact, it feels like being rocked back and forth by waves—the researchers programmed the sled's motion by drawing on data from real buoys in the Pacific Ocean.

In one recent experiment, the team took a two-stage approach to simulating the motion sickness that comes from water landings: First, the group spun 30 human subjects for an hour in the centrifuge. That spinning mimics the disorientation astronauts experience when they suddenly transition from microgravity to the harshness of Earth's gravity.

Next, the researchers rocked the subjects in the sled for as much as an hour. If that sounds like a recipe for nausea, Lonner said, it was.

But, she added, the team also gave each of the subjects a pair of virtual reality goggles to wear. Half of the subjects saw an image of a fixed white dot against a black background. But the other subjects received a much richer picture—a digital forest complete with a few cartoon humans for scale. Those forests also moved in tandem with the sled. When it slid or tilted, so did the trees and people.

"It's like a virtual window," Lonner said.

It also did the trick. Lonner explained that if subjects experienced moderate symptoms of motion sickness for longer than two minutes, they exited the experiment. Only a third of the people wearing goggles showing just the white dot lasted for the entire hour in the sled. In contrast, nearly 80% of subjects watching the forest survived the ordeal.

A window opens

The researchers are working to build on their results, exploring, for example, whether adding more information to the forest scene can help reduce nausea even more. But they are optimistic that virtual reality could give astronauts returning to Earth a little relief.

Lonner sees the project as a way of opening space exploration up to more people—including people like her who get nauseous on airplanes. She's even used some of the lessons from her research in her own life.

"I realized that it's worse when the window is closed, and I can't see the clouds passing by," Lonner said. "Now, I'll always open the window to watch the clouds."

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder

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You Could Probably Hibernate

The science of adapting to cold weather could change treatment of inflammatory diseases, insomnia, and trauma.

is hibernation for space travel possible

Complaining about winter is one of the few remaining bastions of reliably safe small talk. Some people protest— I absolutely love freezing —but most will happily engage in winter bashing. In addition to widespread access to heated homes, offices, and vehicles, new industries continue to emerge on the promise of combatting winter. Moisturizing skin-care regimens are sold as the only way to keep our skin in one piece, and massive down coats are deemed necessary for spending even a few minutes outside. Sun-imitating lamps and vitamins promise to help us maintain a will to live.

Watching the struggle, as the cyclic abyss of winter sucks the vitality out of entire cities, I started to wonder about more comprehensive options. Maybe our minds and bodies are telling us we’re not supposed to be fighting so hard. Maybe it would be easier and more efficient to just shut ourselves down—to stock up energy for the better months. As the days grew shorter and darker, the eyes on New York’s subway emptier, I grew radicalized: It is absolutely ridiculous that we don’t hibernate.

Aside from the social and financial impossibility of recreationally detaching for months at a time, hibernation turns out to be less physically impossible than I imagined. A small group of scientists is taking human hibernation extremely seriously. They are studying the basic mechanisms with an eye to all kinds of applications, such as preserving pulseless trauma victims while critical injuries are repaired, deep-space travel, and altering metabolic rates to help people lose weight.

“It’s very possible that humans could hibernate,” says Kelly Drew, a professor at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Arctic Biology. Drew studies arctic ground squirrels, chunky little creatures that disappear into burrows for eight months of the year. When she and I spoke, it was 35 degrees Fahrenheit below zero (without wind chill) at her lab in Fairbanks, at 2:00 in the afternoon (just before sunset). Suddenly my case for hibernation felt trivial.

The essence of hibernation, Drew explains, is body-temperature regulation. Dropping the body’s core temperature induces a low-metabolic state of “torpor,” in which animals require almost no food. Most of the calories we “warm-blooded” animals burn go into maintaining our body temperatures —our basal metabolic rate. The squirrels Drew studies, for example, curl up into little balls and plummet from 99 degrees to 27. This drops their basal metabolic rate by about 99 percent .

Even dwarf lemurs, primates like us, can similarly reduce their caloric needs to 2 percent by dropping their temperatures. Humans unfortunately seem to have a stubbornly fixed set point: 98.6 degrees. Apart from minuscule daily fluctuations like a night-time drop that coincides with sleep, our temperatures only change as an indication of peril—fever or hypothermia. Just a few degrees can mean the difference between health and imminent death.

This set point was long thought to be immutable, but it may not be. Even though humans don’t typically go into torpor of their own volition—and our bodies typically prevent it by shivering—Drew explains that there’s no single “hibernation molecule” or organ that humans lack. In fact, torpor can be induced by doctors in extreme circumstances. Surgeons, for example, use hypothermia during procedures in which the heart must be stopped for a prolonged period—allowing the brain and other organs to survive longer while deprived of fuel. Cooling is also used in emergency cases after cardiac arrest. Covering sedated patients in blankets that circulate cool water is believed to have a similar effect to putting an ice pack on a sprained ankle, decreasing the inflammatory process to minimize lasting damage to the heart and central nervous system.

Cooling is now widely practiced in hospitals, and some doctors have come to believe the principle could be taken further—essentially keeping people alive after they die. At the University of Maryland, the surgeon Samuel Tisherman is studying what he calls “emergency preservation and resuscitation,” or EPR, an experimental protocol in which doctors rapidly cool trauma victims whose heart stops beating. This could buy time for emergency surgery. Right now, in a severe trauma case, a patient may only have a matter of minutes to live—not enough to make it to the operating table. For example, Tisherman describes a person with a gunshot wound to the aorta who’s bleeding internally, very quickly. If that person’s heart stops, Tisherman’s team will surgically open the chest and massage the heart to keep it pumping as they try to repair the aorta. This only takes a few minutes, but when the patient loses too much blood, it’s over. Deprived of oxygen, the brain dies within minutes.

Cooling could extend that crucial window. Even with the heart stopped, the brain can survive for roughly two hours at a low enough temperature, Tisherman explains. Inducing torpor in such circumstances would mean cooling would have to happen very quickly—requiring a team of anesthesiologists, surgeons, and cardiologists all working in step with almost no advance notice. But the science is there. “These injuries are technically fixable,” Tisherman says. “The limitations are more logistical than physiological.”

This raises the question of other ways this physiology could be altered, therapeutically or otherwise. If a fatally wounded person could be kept alive, could temperature be used to slow metabolic processes in less extreme scenarios? How long could a person stay “hibernating” in good health?

This question is being treated seriously by NASA. Beginning in 2014, the agency funded research on long-term hibernation as a way to facilitate long-term space travel. Going to Mars, for example, is limited by the stubborn needs of astronauts to do things like eat and move around. But if their metabolic processes could be slowed to almost zero, they could theoretically travel much farther. “The obvious benefit is needing less food,” says John Bradford, an aerospace engineer who worked with the agency to develop a human-hibernation protocol . One crew member would stay conscious while the others hibernated for two-week periods. They could be kept in small pods, minimizing the amount of space in the ship that needs to be encased in radiation-blocking shields, which are extremely heavy and fuel-inefficient.

is hibernation for space travel possible

Though his protocol hasn’t actually been executed, Bradford is optimistic. “We couldn’t find any showstoppers, any reason it wouldn’t be possible,” he says. Still, the risk of medical complications is not zero. Because our bodies don’t store food reserves, the astronauts would have to be fed through a tube (surgically inserted by boring a hole through the front of the abdomen into the stomach). Bradford says the biggest challenge would be dropping people’s temperatures without causing them to shiver and burn up energy. In hospitals, shivering is overcome with sedative medications, but Bradford’s team is wary of having a team of astronauts take heavy sedatives for weeks or months.

What’s really needed is a drug that could drop a person’s core temperature safely, inducing torpor of the sort that so many other species enjoy. Bradford and Tisherman both point to this sort of drug as a potential breakthrough—a way to address the clearest limiting factors in their work. And, in fact, the arctic-squirrel biologist Drew has a drug that she believes could do exactly this. She describes its function as “turning down your thermostat.” It works reliably in rats , a nonhibernating animal that has served as her experimental model, and Drew is in talks with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about human testing. In 2019, the National Institutes of Health funded her work with an $11.8 million grant, suggesting the appeal of such therapies for humans is not limited to those who are technically deceased or en route to Mars.

Cooling has the potential to play a part in treating many inflammatory diseases, says Drew. She is also interested in the role of thermoregulation in insomnia. In some cases, the disorder seems to be due to a flaw in the human body’s standard cyclic dip in temperature each evening, so temperature-modulating drugs could help induce sleep. Other researchers, meanwhile, are studying how temperature-dependent metabolic pathways are affected in obesity and diabetes, and whether they could be reset. As Drew puts it, “Thinking about body temperature as something we can control is the beginning of a major change in medicine.”

As for using such a drug to electively hibernate from January to March, I’m now certain that would kill me. Beyond the issue of the brain’s thermal set point, there are anatomical barriers for humans. For example, Drew says that her rats can only be induced into hibernation for about two weeks before they develop sepsis, apparently because of a breakdown of the bowel wall. Many hibernating animals have guts that are anatomically adapted to the practice, unlike ours. Black bears do have guts more similar to humans’, and they sustain hibernation by cycling through a range of body temperatures instead of plummeting for entire months. Human hibernation would likely require similar cycling, which would be more complicated than simply switching off the body’s thermostat with a pill.

A final flaw in my (already apparently fatal) winter hibernation plan is that hibernation is different from sle ep , and doesn’t clearly have the same restorative benefits. Even if I managed to stay unconscious without having my bowels rupture, Bradford explained, I wouldn’t necessarily come out feeling rested. “I’m sure there are people who would love to kind of punch out for a weekend or a week,” he said, “but we don’t know if there’s any therapeutic benefit to doing that.”

Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out If Humans Can Hibernate

Studies of hibernators and experiments inducing short-term torpor in humans may answer whether human hibernation is possible

Maris Fessenden

Former correspondent

Hibernating dormouse

Dive into a science fiction story that sends humans exploring the reaches of space, and you'll likely find the crew waking from some kind of suspended animation. But the idea is also bandied about in science fact: human hibernation would be a boon to astronauts traveling for months or years. So far,  research in this area remains fairly speculative , though, in experiments,  surgeons have cooled people down  to extend surgeries.

The problem is, hibernation isn’t just a deep, months-long sleep. And even if it was, humans aren't built to survive such inactivity.

What we do know about hibernation comes from studying bears, squirrels, lemurs and dormice. All hibernators wake up occasionally—to stretch and perhaps urinate or defecate. Some snack on stored food; others fast and live off of internal fat reserves. The information scientists are gleaning from these habits is now helping to inform study of potential human hibernation, reports Eric Niiler for the Washington Post . 

“We see the science has advanced enough to put some of the science fiction into the realm of science reality,” Leopold Summerer, head of advanced concepts team of the European Space Agency, told Niiler. “It doesn’t mean we will have hibernating astronauts anytime soon, but we are learning from nature how to understand some of the things that happen to animals during hibernation, such as preventing bone loss or preventing muscle loss. This is already something that would be a great benefit for long-distance spaceflight.”

The ESA, NASA and other space agencies are interested not only because humans in space would skip months of boredom if they could hibernate, but because they would need less food, produce less waste and require less space. But they would need a hibernaculum, or suitable space in which to hibernate, reports Tariq Malik for Space.com . He writes:

As envisioned by ESA researchers, such a shelter would provide the proper environment for hibernation - such as the proper temperature - and also serve as a bed in the waking part of the mission. It would also have to protect crewmembers from solar flares, monitor life functions and serve the physiological needs of the hibernator, [Mark Ayre, with ESA] said.

Some clues as to what humans will need to survive long-term in space will likely come from astronaut Scott Kelly’s year in space. (However, privacy concerns may keep the data from that twin study from becoming public.) So for now, our best clues are coming from animals.

Kelly Drew, of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, is one researcher looking at hibernation in animals, Niiler reports.

Kelly and her colleagues at the university’s Institute of Arctic Biology are looking at how the Arctic ground squirrel can get so cold without dying. She believes she has found the molecule that does the job, the A1 adenosine receptor. While she has learned that stimulating this receptor makes the animal get cold, she hasn’t found what triggers it. “We don’t know what the natural signal is for torpor,” she said. “We don’t know where the signal occurs in the brain — it could be in the brain stem or the hypothalamus.”

Still, humans will face challenges that hibernating animals don’t have. Hibernating bears are able to recycle the urea waste generated by metabolizing their fat reserves. Instead of excreting urea, they can actually break it down and use it to build up muscle and organ tissues while they sleep, reports Forrest Wickman for Slate . Humans can’t do that. This fact gives some researchers doubts that human hibernation will ever be a thing.

“I think it’s probably not doable,” H. Craig Heller, of Stanford University told Niiler. “The hibernator [animal] has evolved so that all the enzymes and biochemical systems are adapted to run at low temperature. That is not true of animals that don’t experience it. We can lower body temperature and survive that for a short period of time; it’s unlikely we can allow all of our systems to go to a much lower temperature and continue to function.”

More research will offer a definitive answer, either way. However, we don’t need studies to predict that no hibernating human will be as cute as this snoring dormouse:

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Maris Fessenden | | READ MORE

Maris Fessenden is a freelance science writer and artist who appreciates small things and wide open spaces.

How will Human Hibernation make Space Travel Possible?

Human Hibernation

Human Hibernation looks like Sci-fi and the future of technology to solve the problem of sending humans to Mars and other Planets may be in the future.

Putting humans in a hibernation state to make interplanetary journeys has been a staple of science-fiction films like “Passengers”, “Aliens”, “Prometheus”.

But some experts think it might one day become a reality and even a solution to get people to Mars.

What You think, would it be a reality someday in the future?

Why Hibernation?

In the future 5 billion years later, there will come a time when we have to leave our Solar System because our Sun will become a red giant and our Earth will spiral into the dead sun as our solar system will become dark forever.  

So, we must prepare for space exploration from now on because in front of our universe, we look even smaller than ants. 

If we do not try to protect our existence from now then our species will be extinct and end. 

Solution comes : We should flourish our consciousness throughout the universe on a new habitable planet.

In our universe, there are 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies. It means there would be many stars and planets in them.

Astronomers have found many extrasolar planets which possibly could have life and may be habitable for humans. One day in the future, it could become our new home.

Space exploration was started at the time when humans stepped foot on the moon. 

Next Target

From that moment, we have conducted many space exploration missions. In which our next target is Mars . Probably, we will make our colonies on Mars soon. 

Becoming a multi-planetary species to settle down on planets like Mars seems to be very interesting and risky. 

Now the problem is that Distances are very long in space. We have to travel too much.

Example 

For example : Our nearest solar system is 4 light years away which means light whose speed is highest in the universe. Even if we travel at this speed then it will also take 4 years.

Think if we have to travel 100 light years away then it will take 100 years. This means distances are very long in space.

Long Space Journey

Even if we achieve making Light-Speed Travelling Spacecraft then there will be another problems :

  •  Human’s Age &
  •  Life Span

Suppose, we travel 120 light years and as you know an average human life is 100 years. Then, we will not survive before reaching our destination. However, we can give birth to offspring and they will reach there instead of us. But this is not a definite solution.

There are two solutions for long space journey:

  • Gene Modification : Increase Human Life Span from 100 to 500 years.
  • Hibernation : Keep Human body in a state called Hibernation where our body will not experience that time is passing but time passes continuously and there will be no change in our body just like we do off/on of body.

What is Hibernation?

Hibernation is the process where animals (like bears) slow down their metabolic activities to conserve their energy in the winter days without eating much.

It is a sleep-like state where the animals have to do nothing and just have to be in deep-sleep like a coma.

The main purpose of hibernation is to survive throughout the winter and reduce the need for food during the winter when food is scarce .

Organisms like Bears, Bees, Butterflies, Frogs, Hedgehogs, Anteaters and some species of Marsupials have true potential and are capable of hibernation.

The organisms who are capable of hibernation are known as Hibernators .

Process of Hibernation

When an animal goes under hibernation process, body temperature drops, heartbeat and breathing gets very slow in order to conserve as much energy as it could. It lasts for several months during the winter.

Mostly the bear’s hibernation is noticed due to recycling of their urine and proteins instead of wasting it. 

Normally most of the animals burn carbohydrates for the required energy consumption but when they go into hibernation then they burn fat instead of Carbohydrates.

Hibernation in Human

Having the humans to hibernate would be very beneficial for humanity.

Even when You are sleeping, You are saving upto 6% energy by the metabolic suppression but it’s a tiny part of energy saving in comparison to energy saving of hibernation.

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Suspended Animation In Space Travel: What Scientists Still Need To Learn

Human hibernation could be a great way to get to Mars (and beyond), but a few big questions remain.

By Mary Beth Griggs | Published Oct 16, 2014 8:55 PM EDT

Suspended Animation In Space Travel: What Scientists Still Need To Learn

The first astronauts who head off to Mars might make the entire 180-day journey while they’re fast asleep . In a NASA-commissioned study on human stasis , aerospace engineers at SpaceWorks have found that the benefits of placing a crew in suspended animation for the duration of the journey could be legion. Without living spaces or kitchen facilities, the ship carrying the crew could be lighter and smaller. With everyone basically in hibernation, with a lower metabolic rate, future missions can reduce consumables like food and water by up to 70 percent. And having an unconscious crew also reduces the grueling boredom and chances of personality clashes before humanity can complete the small step/giant leap onto the Red Planet.

It sounds practically perfect in every way, but there’s still a considerable amount of time and research that needs to happen before we send astronauts off to Mars via the shores of sleep. The technology that SpaceWorks is looking at is a form of therapeutic hypothermia that will drop the temperature of the astronauts’ bodies by just 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, reducing their metabolism and putting them in a kind of hibernation. “It doesn’t take much to get the body to start slowing down,” says John Bradford, President of SpaceWorks Enterprises.

Though it involves chilly temperatures, therapeutic hypothermia is a hot topic in the medical world, with numerous published studies and trials in the works , all trying to buy trauma patients an increased chance of recovery on the surgeon’s table. Bradford says that SpaceWorks has been paying close attention to the studies coming out of the medical world, and that they think therapeutic hypothermia could be used safely on interplanetary flight, once some of the medical concerns of such an endeavor are studied and addressed.

One of the biggest issues facing human stasis using therapeutic hypothermia involve the simple fact that the method has only been tested in people who have been severely injured. “Nobody has done this on a healthy person,” Bradford says, making it hard to isolate what benefits or problems the method could pose for astronauts in peak condition. Not only that, but the longest medical trials of therapeutic hypothermia have only lasted for 14 days, and a mission to Mars will take at least 180 days for a one-way journey.

Some of the other medical questions that therapeutic hypothermia faces:

  • Cognitive function—How will being unconscious for six months affect the human brain, and how long will recovery take? “Is it going to be a couple hours, a couple days?” Bradford says, adding: “We’d like to measure how well you can perform when you get there.” A recovery time on the scale of months would obviously be problematic. Bradford says that initial results from case studies showed that some patients who underwent therapeutic hypothermia actually preformed better cognitively after the procedure than before. Then again, before the procedure, those patients were severely injured, so it’s hard to say how astronauts would react.
  • Muscle atrophy and bone loss— Staying in shape is hard enough for astronauts and cosmonauts who are awake. But add being completely sedentary to a weightless environment and the threats of muscle atrophy and bone loss become much more severe. To counter the physiological effects, Bradford says that astronauts in stasis will be treated with drugs to counter the bone loss, and their muscles will be given an electrical workout, stimulated by small electrical impulses. “We can envision that you’re constantly being exercised in this manner,” Bradford says.
  • Intracranial pressure—One of the more enigmatic challenges faced by long-term spaceflight projects is the effect of intracranial pressure on astronauts. Researchers have noticed that without gravity, fluids in the body tend to move towards the upper body, raising pressure in the skull, and affecting vision. Bradford says that some medical studies have found that induced hypothermia can reduce cranial pressure in situations here on earth, which gives him hope that it could have a beneficial impact on astronauts.
  • Radiation—Exposure to radiation is a huge challenge to long distance spaceflight , but Bradford hopes that stasis using hypothermia could reduce the risk. A summary of the proposed method from SpaceWorks says : “Testing in animals has shown that cancerous tumor growth and the effects of radiation are significantly reduced and slowed during the torpor-state (on par with metabolic rate reduction).” In addition, the savings on mass (no living quarters, less food, etc) mean that a transport vessel using stasis could theoretically be heavily armored against radiation in a way that a larger vessel could not.

Bradford says that the next phases of research will involve longer term testing on animals, then humans, and eventually, humans in space– likely on the ISS. He’s optimistic that with all the ongoing medical tests on therapeutic hypothermia, a viable solution for the Mars mission will be available well before any Mars projects get off the ground. “A space application is just part of it. Instead of developing some niche technology, we’re going to leverage something that’s existing,” Bradford says.

And, just for the record, unlike many science fiction plots where something goes wrong and the capsule containing the astronauts is left to float in space for centuries , if something were to go wrong on a Mars mission using stasis, the hibernation system would automatically shut off, waking the crew and allowing them to make necessary repairs.

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ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt wears a cap with sensors to record his brain activity

Top 5: Space for your health

Space has led to technological innovations with wide-ranging applications in healthcare. Beyond consumer gadgets, such as wireless headsets and scratch-resistant lenses, space exploration is a catalyst for understanding the human body and advancing scientific results that benefit people worldwide. Here are Europe’s top 5 stories in space for your health.

Gravity affects everything we do and everything that happens inside and around us. On Earth’s surface, everything is subject to an average gravitational acceleration of 9.81 m/s 2 , or what we call 1 g. This acceleration keeps us grounded but it also influences all reactions and phenomena around us, from falling apples to cell growth.

Microgravity conditions allow scientists to study phenomena free from the influence of gravity and investigate in depth the fundamental mechanisms at play. The International Space Station provides uninterrupted periods of weightlessness and offers the opportunity for scientists to conduct research, with the help of astronauts on board, that would be impossible to perform on Earth.

Growing old in space

The effects on the human body in microgravity are similar to ageing but sped up: after six months in space, astronauts experience a loss in bone density of about 1% a month as well as muscle atrophy, losing up to a fifth of their muscle mass and two-fifths of their muscle strength. To fight this loss, astronauts exercise two hours every day on the Space Station. These detrimental effects are reversed once the astronauts spend some time back on Earth.

A variety of experiments sent to the International Space Station,  including the Molecular Muscle Experiment and Myotones , investigate the effects of microgravity on the musculoskeletal system. The In Vitro Bone experiment, sent to the Station in 2018, monitored the degradation of bone cells in the presence and absence of the irisin protein. The presence of irisin was found to counteract the effect of microgravity, which could lead to the  development of an irisin-based therapy  to the benefit of our ageing population. 

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Monitoring close to your heart

A technology developed to telemonitor the mechanical function of astronauts’ hearts while in microgravity will soon allow people on Earth to keep track of their heart’s health from the comfort of their homes.  

HeartKinetics, a business supported by the ESA innovation centre in Belgium , has developed a non-invasive way to keep track of your heart’s function using the accelerator and gyroscope sensors in your smartphone to record your heart’s mechanical activity and rhythm, delivering a remote cardiac assessment in just a few minutes. This technology will benefit the 49 million people living with cardiovascular disease in the EU who may not always be able to see a doctor, or who need follow-ups after being discharged from the hospital. 

The heart-monitoring technology has been tested in microgravity since the Space Shuttle era and in parabolic flights

Growing blood vessels in space

By cultivating human endothelial cells in space, which are the cells that line the inner wall of our blood vessels, researchers can gain insight into how these function and grow without the effect of gravity. During the  Spheroids  experiment conducted on the International Space Station in 2016, cell cultures cultivated in microgravity formed three-dimensional globular and tubular structures without the need for external support, a feat previously unattainable on Earth. The experiment results are opening up possibilities to grow artificial blood vessels as well as gain knowledge for the prevention and treatment of blood-related diseases such as hypertension and thrombosis. 

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Tracking eyes from space to laser surgery

An eye-tracking device developed for space is now commonly used in laser surgery. On Earth, your eyes can remain steady even while you shake your head, thanks to your inner ear which uses gravity as a reference. Researchers wanted to study how astronauts cope in space without this reference point and so needed a robust method to track their eyes without interfering with their work.

After an eye-tracking helmet was tested on the International Space Station for several years, engineers realised the technology had an application on Earth in laser-eye surgery, where it is necessary to track the patient’s eye to precisely direct the laser scalpel.

ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter wears the eye-tracking device in space

Hibernation for space travel and surgery

Human hibernation could be the best way to keep crew healthy on missions to Mars, but it also has potential medical applications, especially for surgery. By entering a state known as torpor, astronauts could significantly reduce their metabolic rates and energy consumption, meaning they would need to bring less food and water with them.

Research by ESA’s science teams has also shown that hibernation could mitigate the harmful effects of cosmic radiation during prolonged space travel. On Earth, induced torpor has a variety of medical applications, especially for surgery: as a replacement for anaesthesia, for those who are allergic, or to improve survival rates in critical scenarios such as heart attacks or violence-related injuries.

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Find out more about how research in space benefits us all  here ,  here  and also  here .   

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First commercial Moon mission marks new era for space travel

  • Published 7 days ago

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on the IM-1 mission

The landing of a first commercial spacecraft on the Moon has sparked excitement about a new age of possibilities in the Solar System.

News of the touchdown of Odysseus near the lunar south pole was greeted with cheers by staff at American firm Intuitive Machines' (IM) mission control in Houston, Texas, on Thursday.

It is the first time an American craft has successfully landed on the Moon since 1972 - and the first time ever that a private company has done so.

But the giant leap for commercial kind could also help future state missions to the lunar surface and perhaps even aid plans to set up a lunar - or Martian - base for humans.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of America's most famous astrophysicists, believes missions of this kind "should have been happening decades ago".

But he told the BBC's Americast that further state-funded missions might be needed before many private businesses look seriously at opportunities in space, given the level of up-front funding needed to get ventures off the ground.

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"There is no business case to go into space first," Mr deGrasse Tyson argued.

He suggested that if the US put a base on Mars then "after that's done, the expensive way, private enterprise can say 'well, maybe there is another way to get there that is cheaper'.

"Maybe you set up an amusement park or a tourist visiting site if it's cheap enough.

"But if you can't get the price down then it's not going to happen."

There are hopes that the touchdown could plant the seeds of a wider, thriving lunar economy. The vision involves a range of companies buying and selling services such as transport, communication and power.

Nasa is trying to encourage firms to get involved in exploration beyond Earth, with the US space agency engaging a number of companies to take its scientific instruments to the Moon. These private entities build, launch and operate their missions.

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Watch: There were celebrations at the Texas company Intuitive Machines

Nasa purchased room on Odysseus for six scientific instruments, and some of its equipment helped the robot craft overcome technical issues - demonstrating the capacity for private and state actors to co-operate successfully in the space exploration industry.

The mission is part of Nasa's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme, in which the agency is paying various private American companies for transport services to the Moon - in this particular case, with a fee of $118M (£93m).

IM's effort follows that of another private entity, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, which set off for the Moon in early January but could not even attempt a landing because of technical problems.

IM, which claims to "open access to the Moon for the progress of humanity", was founded by Kam Ghaffarian, Stephen Altemus and Tim Crain - all of whom have significantly lower profiles than the likes of Elon Musk and Richard Branson.

That billionaire duo have both tried their hands at different forms of private space exploration - with varying degrees of success - and are planning further forays.

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Many firms will see the risks and costs involved as reason enough to remain Earth-bound.

But other companies are also hoping to get involved in trips to the Moon, which had seen relatively little interest compared with the much-hyped - and state-based - "Space Race" of the mid to late 20th Century.

Only a handful of other countries have since successfully landed a spacecraft on the Moon's surface - the state space programmes of the then Soviet Union, China, India and Japan.

Odysseus looks at the Moon

Yet in Europe, too, interest now appears to be picking up. Some of Odysseus' communications are being facilitated by Goonhilly Ltd in Cornwall, UK, which has several large radio dishes capable of picking up signals from the Moon's surface.

Nearby Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, of Guildford, is building a telecoms spacecraft that will circle the Moon to provide a relay service to anyone who needs to get data back to the Earth.

Meanwhile, Nasa has a shortlist of lunar locations to send astronauts to later this decade in its Artemis programme - and one of them is Odysseus' targeted landing site, known as Malapert.

It is the southernmost point on the Moon ever visited by a spacecraft, and scientists think there could be frozen water nearby which could be vital to future missions.

But the key question is how sustainable a lunar economy can become long-term.

Will there be enough activity at the Moon to justify investors' courage in building the emerging infrastructure?

For the foreseeable future, government funding will have to prop up this industry.

That all means it may be quite some time before a thriving lunar economy is able to establish itself.

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IMAGES

  1. How Astronaut Hibernation for Deep-Space Travel Works (Infographic)

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  2. Hibernation Pods Are the Holy Grail of Space Exploration, Here’s What

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  3. Human hibernation: Secrets behind the big sleep

    is hibernation for space travel possible

  4. Hibernation Pods Are the Holy Grail of Space Exploration, Here’s What

    is hibernation for space travel possible

  5. Hibernation Pods Are the Holy Grail of Space Exploration, Here’s What

    is hibernation for space travel possible

  6. ESA studies human hibernation for space travel

    is hibernation for space travel possible

VIDEO

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  5. क्या क्रायोस्लीप से अंतरिक्ष में लंबी दूरी तय कर पाएगेंIs cryosleep possible asshown in Interstellar

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COMMENTS

  1. Hibernation for long human spaceflights is not sci-fi, scientists say

    Space Exploration. Human Spaceflight. Astronauts that hibernate on long spaceflights are not just for sci-fi. We could test it in 10 years. News. By Tereza Pultarova. published 21 March 2023. "We ...

  2. Here's Why Hibernation in Space May Not Be Possible For Humans After

    Here's Why Hibernation in Space May Not Be Possible For Humans After All. Sending humans virtually anywhere in space beyond the Moon pushes logistics of health, food, and psychology to limits we're only just beginning to grasp. A staple solution to these problems in science fiction is to simply put the void-travelers to bed for a while.

  3. Human hibernation is possible and could boost longevity

    Human hibernation is a real possibility - this is how it might work. Mounting evidence suggests that humans may have the biological hardware to benefit from some aspects of hibernation. Switching ...

  4. Is human hibernation possible? Going to sleep for long duration spaceflight

    In addition, the European Space Agency has also been investigating human hibernation, and a possible way to enable long-duration spaceflight. They have plans to test out the technology on various ...

  5. Will we ever...hibernate in space?

    For a long time a trope of science fiction stories, some scientists believe that human hibernation across the vastness of space could one day be possible. If it were, it would be a boon for space ...

  6. Humans might be able to hibernate during space travel

    Nothing like this is yet possible in the real world, at least for us humans. But some animals and birds have their own forms of suspended animation: They hibernate. This might hold some lessons for how to put astronauts of the future into hibernation for long space flights. But for really long journeys, a deep freeze might be the best option.

  7. Is Human Hibernation Possible? Going to Sleep for Long Duration

    And so, the job of space travel fell to us, the fragile, 80-year lifespanned mammals. ... the European Space Agency has also been investigating human hibernation, and a possible way to enable long ...

  8. Can Humans Ever Harness the Power of Hibernation?

    Scientists want to know if astronauts can hibernate during long spaceflights. First, they need to understand what hibernation is. The doormouse hibernates to conserve resources in harsh conditions ...

  9. ESA

    An ESA-led investigation suggests that human hibernation goes beyond the realm of science-fiction and may become a game-changing technique for space travel. When packing for a return flight to the Red Planet, space engineers account for around two years' worth of food and water for the crew. Torpor during hibernation is an induced state that ...

  10. ESA

    Hibernate for a trip to Mars, the bear way. Hibernating astronauts could be the best way to save mission costs, reduce the size of spacecraft by a third and keep crew healthy on their way to Mars. An ESA-led investigation suggests that human hibernation goes beyond the realm of science-fiction and may become a game-changing technique for space ...

  11. ESA studies human hibernation for space travel

    The European Space Agency (ESA) said on November 18, 2019, that its scientists have recently been investigating the process of placing astronauts into hibernation to cross the vastness of space ...

  12. Are humans able to hibernate to travel deeper into space?

    Scientists reveal how space travel weakens astronauts' immune systems. "So, hibernation can reduce the psychological stress and boredom of the crew," she added. On top of the mental gains ...

  13. Could Astronauts Hibernate on Long Space Voyages?

    As Alexander explained: "Hibernation will actually help protect people from the harmful effects of radiation during deep space travel. Away from Earth's magnetic field, damage caused by high ...

  14. Hibernation artificially triggered in potential space travel

    In science fiction, space crews are often spared the boredom and inconvenience of long-distance space travel by being placed into a state of suspended animation. Now this goal may have come a step ...

  15. A new hibernation study is bad news for future space travelers

    According to the study, you would need 6.3 grams of fat each day to hibernate in space, adding up to 450 pounds for a 90-year journey. Plus, there are also ethical problems concerning potential ...

  16. Hi-tech pods that allow humans to hibernate for long-distance space

    Hi-tech pods that allow human beings to hibernate for long-distance space travel are about to become a reality. ... And the Uchikoshi case showed it's possible to survive an even longer cooling ...

  17. How Astronaut Hibernation for Deep-Space Travel Works (Infographic)

    Space trips to the other planets would require months of travel through the vacuum of space. Maintaining the crew's health is a vital concern. If the crew could be induced to hibernate, the ...

  18. Human Hibernation for Space Travel is Possible, But Your Body Doesn't

    Background: Human Hibernation for Space Travel. Developing the technology to travel quickly through space is becoming increasingly important as our species has its eyes on Mars and beyond. While the latest developments in propulsion may shorten the time it takes to reach other planets in our solar system, we are nowhere near reaching science ...

  19. With space travel comes motion sickness. These engineers want to help

    Addressing such motion sickness will become increasingly important as more people travel into space, and stay there for long, Lonner said. In recent lab experiments, the team discovered that ...

  20. Human Hibernation Is a Real Possibility

    Beginning in 2014, the agency funded research on long-term hibernation as a way to facilitate long-term space travel. Going to Mars, for example, is limited by the stubborn needs of astronauts to ...

  21. Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out If Humans Can Hibernate

    Studies of hibernators and experiments inducing short-term torpor in humans may answer whether human hibernation is possible. ... Space Travel.

  22. How will Human Hibernation make Space Travel Possible?

    But this is not a definite solution. There are two solutions for long space journey: Gene Modification: Increase Human Life Span from 100 to 500 years. Hibernation: Keep Human body in a state called Hibernation where our body will not experience that time is passing but time passes continuously and there will be no change in our body just like ...

  23. Suspended Animation In Space Travel: What Scientists Still Need To Learn

    Suspended Animation In Space Travel: What Scientists Still Need To Learn. Human hibernation could be a great way to get to Mars (and beyond), but a few big questions remain.

  24. ESA

    Hibernation for space travel and surgery. Human hibernation could be the best way to keep crew healthy on missions to Mars, but it also has potential medical applications, especially for surgery. By entering a state known as torpor, astronauts could significantly reduce their metabolic rates and energy consumption, meaning they would need to ...

  25. Hibernation for space travel: Impact on radioprotection

    Hibernation is a state of reduced metabolic activity used by some animals to survive in harsh environmental conditions. The idea of exploiting hibernation for space exploration has been proposed many years ago, but in recent years it is becoming more realistic, thanks to the introduction of specific methods to induce hibernation-like conditions (synthetic torpor) in non-hibernating animals.

  26. Intuitive Machines: Moon lander pictured on its side with snapped leg

    The robot is expected to go into hibernation on Thursday at the latest. ... First private Moon mission marks new era for space travel. Odysseus' successful landing has sparked excitement around a ...

  27. First commercial Moon mission marks new era for space travel

    Intuitive Machines' Moon lander took off on a Space X rocket. The landing of a first commercial spacecraft on the Moon has sparked excitement about a new age of possibilities in the Solar System.