San Diego Researchers Are Contributing To A Human Spaceflight Mission To Mars

Speaker 1: 00:00 The 50th anniversary of the first Apollo Mission to the moon is tomorrow and that has many people reflecting on the marvel of human space flight. KPBS science and technology reporter Shalina Chet Lani says, some of the science to make long range missions happen is coming from labs right here in San Diego. Speaker 2: 00:20 Scientists at UC San Diego gear up for a daily procedure, placing petri dishes, filled with tiny brains into a refrigerator. Biologist, Doctor Alison Motrey and his team are developing these organoids for a voyage. Speaker 3: 00:34 It's the first time where, uh, [inaudible] derived from the stem cells we'll be sending, we'll be sent to space. Yup. Speaker 2: 00:42 These organoids and others from researchers around the country are destined for the international space station. It's scheduled for departure the day after the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions to the moon, Speaker 4: 00:53 the ankle Raga Twain crying quality. We copy you on the ground Speaker 2: 00:58 and just as NASA is doing, Motrey is thinking about longterm human space flight. Speaker 3: 01:04 We're going to have a human's colonizing other planets, so we need to understand better what's the impact of microgravity on human neuro development. Speaker 2: 01:13 Motrey says these globs of tissue mimic genetically and architecturally in actual brain. They were made in space conditions and will be kept in a mini lab to control their environment. The only difference he says will be gravity or lack thereof motor. He says he's hoping to see how gravity impacts the cells. For example, he says there could be accelerated aging but stem cells aren't new to space and there have already been studies on the human body and brains in other ways Speaker 3: 01:41 though I, I have not come back to my earth height yet. I grew two feet am I? My brother is three foot six and now I can like rub his head. He's retired astronauts, Scott Kelly at the NASA headquarters in May, 2016 but actually so I stretched an inch and a half and there was this talk that I grew two inches of just stretch Speaker 2: 02:05 Kelly and his twin brother Mark Kelly are a part of the NASA twin study. Well, Scott Kelly spent nearly a year in space. His brother stayed on earth. NASA has been studying them to see how space conditions impact the human body. Kelly says at one point, yeah, Speaker 3: 02:18 I kinda had flu like symptoms for a few days. Had I not been in space for a year and I knew what this was, I would have gone to the emergency room and said, am you know I'm really, I don't know what's wrong with me when I'm not feeling that great, but that's why we do this. I mean, we need to learn these things. If we're going to go to Mars Speaker 2: 02:35 and Kelly says there's a lot we need to learn. Some of that research is coming from UC San Diego, ucs, d physiologist. Alan Hargins vacuums out all the air from an exercise machine while another health scientist researcher Brenda Ronna is strapped into it. This type of device he says, could help astronauts maintain blood balance by sucking fluids their feet. Speaker 3: 03:00 When people do things in space, it takes a long time for them to do it as compared to on earth. Part of that is because of the loss of our gravity, but we think the other part is maybe to altered blood flow to the brain. Speaker 2: 03:16 Hargens and Ronna both worked on the NASA twin study. NASA revealed some initial findings in April showing, for example, changes in Kelly's gut bacteria. Ronna says, researchers are now looking at urine and blood samples to see impacts on Kelly at the molecular level. But she says there are still some limitations to these findings when studying a whole person and not the tissue. You can have organs on a plate study. Um, they're really important for NASA. They provide a way to kind of hone in on the specific environment of spaced and what that does to the organ itself. Though organs don't work in isolation, she says. So it's important for us to do both studies and you know, at the cellular level, at the tissue level, at the organ level, at the whole organism level, um, and put all that information together. That's why she says scientific research coming from places like UC San Diego and nationally can help NASA get closer to a major goal, a safe human expedition to Mars. That'd be it. That'd be great. I mean, I would love for that to happen in my lifetime cause I'd love to go and visit Mars. Shelina Celani k PBS news. Speaker 5: 04:29 [inaudible].