Space madness: Long-term Space Trips Could Impair Astronaut Brains
When NASA first began sending astronauts out into space, they worried about “space madness” – a malady they thought weightlessness and claustrophobia would trigger out beyond the atmosphere of the earth. It never materialized. But they may have been on to something.
Astronauts on future long-term trips into space could be permanently affected mentally by energized particles bombarding them along the way, according to new research presented by the University of California at Irvine.
Energized charged particles, including the fully ionized oxygen and titanium found in galactic cosmic rays, cause significant damage to the central nervous system over long-term exposure, according to the study, appearing in Science Advances.
“This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two- to three-year round trip to Mars,” said Charles Limoli, a professor of radiation oncology in the UC – Irvine School of Medicine. “Performance decrements, memory deficits, and loss of awareness and focus during spaceflight may affect mission-critical activities and exposure to these particles may have long-term adverse consequences to cognition throughout life.”
Rodents were subjected to the irradiated particles at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.
The particles caused brain inflammations, which disrupted signal transmission between neurons, they found. Permanent damage could result.
For trips through space, astronauts would be subjected to similar bombardment, the researchers found. Not so for the people working on the International Space Station for long periods of time, since they are still within the protective magnetosphere of the Earth.
The radiation study comes just as a NASA team told the scientific community that they’ve made an advanced-propulsion breakthrough which might make interstellar travel possible in the future.
