TRISH research on Fram2 Mission to advance space health research, exploration

The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a consortium led by Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Space Medicine with partners Caltech and MIT, announced today six human health and performance research projects to be conducted aboard the Fram2 human spaceflight mission.

TRISH’s research projects will evaluate the human body’s response to spaceflight and the space environment, including changes to cognitive function, impacts of increased radiation exposure and physiology. Subsequent data findings will be used to develop new technologies to enhance human health and performance during spaceflight missions, including future missions to the moon and Mars.

The projects are part of TRISH’s EXPAND (Enhancing eXploration Platforms and ANalog Definition) Program, a commercial spaceflight health research program that collects pre-, in- and post-flight human health and performance data, environmental parameters and biosamples from multiple commercial spaceflight missions and stores them in a centralized research database and biosample repository.

“The valuable space health data that will be captured during Fram2 will advance our understanding of how humans respond and adapt to the stressors of space,” said Jimmy Wu, TRISH deputy director and chief engineer and assistant professor in Baylor’s Center for Space Medicine. “Thanks to the continued interest in furthering space health by commercial space crews, each human health research project sent into orbit brings us closer to improving crewmember well-being aboard future spaceflight missions.”

Fram2 will be the first all-civilian human spaceflight mission to launch into a polar orbit. The four spaceflight participants will spend several days aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at an altitude of almost 450 kilometers (50km higher than the International Space Station) and study light emissions resembling strong thermal emission velocity enhancements.

“We are excited to contribute to the knowledge of the human body in extreme environments – how does cognitive performance change and how fast do genetic alterations happen? By collecting our data in-flight we hope to help the researchers answer these questions and thereby pave the way to ambitious deep space missions,” said Rabea Rogge, Fram2 vehicle pilot.

The TRISH EXPAND biomedical research projects for Fram2 include:

Cognitive and Physiologic Responses in Commercial Space Crew on Short-Duration Missions, Mathias Basner, M.D., Ph.D., M.S., University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine 

Spaceflight participants experience a multitude of stressors that can affect brain function and crew physiology. Basner’s team will track spaceflight participants’ cognitive performance including memory, spatial orientation and attention before, during and after the mission to assess the mental impact of space travel. Participants also will wear a Garmin smartwatch and a BioIntelliSense BioButton® medical grade device that may inform any changes in cognitive performance.

Otolith and Posture Evaluation II, Mark Shelhamer, Sc.D., Johns Hopkins University 

Many space travelers develop motion sickness, nausea and disorientation shortly after launch and landing, which can impact performance. Using a series of tests administered on a tablet device, Shelhamer will study how astronauts’ eyes sense and respond to motion before and immediately after spaceflight to better predict who is likely to develop space motion sickness.

REM and CAD Radiation Monitoring for Private Astronaut Spaceflight, Stuart George, Ph.D., NASA JSC

When astronauts travel past Earth’s protective atmospheric layers and radiation belts, they are exposed to harmful radiation from the sun and universe, which could cause lifelong health complications. George’s team will collect and analyze the radiation data to better understand the space radiation exposure the astronauts experience. The polar orbit of Fram2 provides a unique opportunity to study the space radiation environment over Earth’s north and south poles.

Space Omics + BioBank, Richard Gibbs, Ph.D., and Harsha Doddapaneni, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine

Comparisons of pre-flight and post-flight samples collected from astronauts on space missions can provide critical insights into the impact of space travel on human health. The team at Baylor’s Human Genome Sequencing Center has developed the Genomic Evaluation of Space Travel and Research (GENESTAR) manual for biobanking and omics data generation specifically for this purpose. These comparisons also can advance health care on Earth by revealing alterations in gene expression in response to extreme environmental stressors.

Standardized research questionnaires, TRISH

TRISH has implemented a set of standardized research questionnaires for the crew to collect data on their sleep, personality, health history, team dynamics and immune-related symptoms. These additional contextual and qualitative data points will become part of TRISH’s EXPAND research database, available to current and future scientists exploring space health.

Sensorimotor adaptation, TRISH

The ability to stand, balance and have full body control will be critical elements when astronauts return to the moon. TRISH collects data before and after flight to help understand the level of sensorimotor ability and change as well as time to recovery. 

TRISH (Translational Research Institute for Space Health) is a lean institute empowered by the NASA Human Research Program to solve the challenges of human deep space exploration.