Review Of Nasa S Longitudinal Study Of Astronaut Health

As part of its ongoing commitment to the nation's space program, NASA's medical leadership asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to review specific aspects of the scientific basis, policies, and procedures associated with the Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health (LSAH). NASA created the LSAH in 1992 to address a variety of issues, including both the health of astronauts during space flight and the longer-term health issues that might be associated with space flight and flight training.

As part of its ongoing commitment to the nation's space program, NASA's medical leadership asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to review specific aspects of the scientific basis, policies, and procedures associated with the Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health (LSAH). NASA created the LSAH in 1992 to address a variety of issues, including both the health of astronauts during space flight and the longer-term health issues that might be associated with space flight and flight training.

This is the fourth in a series of five letter reports that provide an independent review of the more than 30 evidence reports that NASA has compiled on human health risks for long-duration and exploration spaceflights.This letter report reviews eight evidence reports and examines the quality of the evidence, analysis, and overall construction of each report; identifies existing gaps in report content; and provides suggestions for additional sources of expert input.

Safe Passage: Astronaut Care for Exploration Missions sets forth a vision for space medicine as it applies to deep space voyage. As space missions increase in duration from months to years and extend well beyond Earth's orbit, so will the attendant risks of working in these extreme and isolated environmental conditions. Hazards to astronaut health range from greater radiation exposure and loss of bone and muscle density to intensified psychological stress from living with others in a confined space. Going beyond the body of biomedical research, the report examines existing space medicine clinical and behavioral research and health care data and the policies attendant to them. It describes why not enough is known today about the dangers of prolonged travel to enable humans to venture into deep space in a safe and sane manner. The report makes a number of recommendations concerning NASA's structure for clinical and behavioral research, on the need for a comprehensive astronaut health care system and on an approach to communicating health and safety risks to astronauts, their families, and the public.

As space medicine evolved from the late 1950s onward, the need arose for a ready reference for students and practitioners on the basic concepts of this new specialty. Through three editions edited by leaders in the development of space medicine, this classic text has met the need. This fourth edition of Space Physiology and Medicine provides succinct, evidence-based summaries of the current knowledge base in space medicine and serves as a source of information on the space environment, responses, and practices. Additionally, there is extensive online material available for each chapter, featuring overviews and self-study questions.

On 29 July 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which became operational on 1 October of that year. Over the next 50 years, NASA achieved a set of spectacular feats, ranging from advancing the well-established field of aeronautics to pioneering the new fields of Earth and space science and human spaceflight. In the midst of the geopolitical context of the Cold War, 12 Americans walked on the Moon, arriving in peace “for all mankind.” Humans saw their home planet from a new perspective, with unforgettable Apollo images of Earthrise and the “Blue Marble,” as well as the “pale blue dot” from the edge of the solar system. A flotilla of spacecraft has studied Earth, while other spacecraft have probed the depths of the solar system and the universe beyond. In the 1980s, the evolution of aeronautics gave us the first winged human spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station stands as a symbol of human cooperation in space as well as a possible way station to the stars. With the Apollo fire and two Space Shuttle accidents, NASA has also seen the depths of tragedy. In this volume, a wide array of scholars turn a critical eye toward NASA’s first 50 years, probing an institution widely seen as the premier agency for exploration in the world, carrying on a long tradition of exploration by the United States and the human species in general. Fifty years after its founding, NASA finds itself at a crossroads that historical perspectives can only help to illuminate.