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On Monday, an An astronaut capsule that looks like a giant orange juicer is splashed in the Atlantic Ocean, returning its four-man crew under the influence of Earth’s gravity. These astronauts have spent six months International Space Station, and so now the gravity that pulls on their bodies will feel familiar, but strange.
This team called SpaceX Crew-2 spent a large part of the last half year doing scientific work in space in orbit, as well as doing tests. “fabric chips, ”Small-scale analogues of human organs. But they also spent hours as a gym rat: six days a week, they had a 2.5-hour exercise block to reduce the damage that living in space could do to the body. Space, as they say, is hard. But it’s especially hard for humans. Radiation, lack of gravity and living in confined spaces each takes its own toll.
“NASA has always been concerned about the impact of spaceflight on the human body since the first space missions,” says Michael Stenger, an elemental scientist. Measures against Human Health, dedicated to understanding how the agency’s arm affects space flight in physiology and mitigating those effects. A big problem is that living in orbit is physiologically similar to being in bed, even if you have been experimenting all day. “Being in space is like lying down doing nothing,” he says.
When you don’t have to deal with gravity, your muscles and bones lose strength because these parts of the anatomy are attached to a kind of “use or lose” philosophy. Muscles can atrophy, they would act as if an astronaut was lying on the couch Erori all day. Bones can lose mass: both are formed and broken by the forces they endure day by day, both as a result of gravity and from the use of muscles. After six months in space, the proximal femoral bone in the leg can be left aside 10 percent its mass, it must recover for years on earth.
Space is also tough for the cardiovascular system, says Stenger: “Already your heart doesn’t need to pump so much to maintain blood pressure, so it weakens your heart.” The year astronaut Scott Kelly was in space, his heart sank more than a quarter, adapting to its new conditions. Under the influence of gravity, the heart can pump itself back to normal, with apparently no long-term damage.
Scientists don’t quite understand why, but the backs of astronauts are also longer in space, gaining a few inches. Passengers return to their normal size on Earth, but after flight, astronauts are at greater risk for a herniated disc, which may be related to these spinal changes. In addition, clothing and equipment must be designed to their size, and if these dimensions change, the design becomes more complicated, especially for long journeys.
To ensure that astronauts ’interiors are suitable for their tasks in space and to keep them healthy when they return to Earth, Anti-Human Health measures have sought to correct these physiological defects, in part with gym equipment built for space. Advanced Endurance Exercise The device is a sort of space-based Bowflex: it uses vacuum cylinders to create hundreds of pounds of endurance, and microgravity athletes can reconfigure them for deadlifts, squats, or bench presses for two hours, including time. it needs to reconfigure the device and perform a small recovery. The ISS has a treadmill and a cycling machine that astronauts use for 30-minute workouts.
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