NASA: Space Travel Genetic Changes are Temporary

Over the years, the space agencyNASA studied the effects of space travel on the human body on the example of the twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly. From 2015 to 2016, Scott was at the International Space Station, while his brother Mark remained on Earth. After a while, researchers compared their health outcomes and found that space travel clearly influenced gene expression. It turned out that everything is not as bad as previously thought.

Recently in the scientific journal Science waspublished a note that despite the genetic changes that have occurred with Scott, he feels great. Changes in his body were temporary, and he had already returned to normal. This is a valuable discovery for the scientific community, because in the future mankind intends to make flights to Mars and other distant planets.

In particular, the changes encounteredScott's organism was related to telomeres - caps that protect chromosomes. It was found that these protective chromosome areas during space travel are beginning to slowly collapse. If these changes were not temporary, one could say that space is guaranteed to shorten the lives of astronauts, but, fortunately, the effect was temporary.

Previous studies have also shown thatlong space missions weaken the immune system. The new discovery proved that over time, the astronauts' immunity is also rather quickly restored - flights to distant planets are not as bad as they might seem.

With all this, NASA researchers needother astronauts can also follow the state of health to make sure that absolutely everyone can recover from space travel. Otherwise, they will have to look for ways to restore them and protect them from change.

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