In Space Our Body Acts As If It's Under Attack From A Virus, So How Will We Go To Mars?

Not only is living in space just plain weird to deal with, exposure to it for a long time can have long-lasting effects on your body.

NASA has been studying just that to evaluate how astronauts would stack up to a long trip, and there are some weird results.

Astronaut Scott Kelly (R) along with his brother, former Astronaut Mark Kelly (L) - Robert Markowitz/NASA

The subjects of their study were NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and his civilian twin brother Mark. Scott spent 342 days aboard the International Space Station, giving NASA a subject in whom to measure changes, while his twin brother acts as a sort of control group for the study.

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The full report isn't out yet, but NASA did reveal a brief summary at a conference last week. And one of the results they uncovered was that Scott's immune system seriously bumped up in space.

"It's almost as if the body's on high alert," said Christopher Mason, an associate professor of computational genomics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Basically, it's like his body felt it was under attack by a foreign agent like a virus.

Aside from that, long periods spent in microgravity have also been known to cause bone density loss, muscle loss, impaired vision, and a disrupted sleep cycle. This research now shows there are apparently also changes at the cellular level.

"It's mostly really good news," Mason said. "The body has extraordinary plasticity and adaptation to being in zero gravity, at least for a year."

It's still good news though. After all, none of these indicate astronauts wouldn't survive two and a half years in space. That's the time it would take to complete a round trip to Mars.

Also Read: Re-Engineering Humans: How Astronauts Could Be Genetically Modified To Better Survive In Space

The problem they do have to worry about however is cosmic and solar radiation. Astronauts on the ISS are protected from this by the outer layers of the Earth's atmosphere. The increased levels of it in deep space may not necessarily set back a mission, but the possible health consequences are a cause for concern.

In addition, nothing from this study is concrete, given that their sample size was two people. It is promising however that no new red flags came up. That's important, given that NASA is in the future considering a man trip to Mars, that would require astronauts spending six months flying each way, and an 18 month stay on the Martian surface.

The four to six astronauts to go on this mission would already be under considerable psychological stress, so any physiological problems tacked onto that would compound the situation.

Let's hope they can figure it all out before they lock the men and women up together in a tiny metal box in space for years.