ABOVE: NASA
Humans have been traveling out of the Earth’s atmosphere to explore the near-reaches of our solar system for decades, but biologists have only a rudimentary understanding of how this influences astronauts’ health, says Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine. A collection of more than a dozen studies authored by more than 200 scientists, published today (November 25) in Cell Press journals, aims to characterize the molecular and cellular changes that occur as a result of spaceflight.
“It’s a little bit preposterous to have so much come out all at once,” admits Mason, who says there’s more on the way. “But it’s a big unknown question so we wanted to address it with a lot of data.”
The Scientist spoke with Mason, a coauthor on nine of the new papers and a review of the collection, to learn more about the research.
Christopher Mason: A lot of ...
