If everything proceeds as planned, February of the following year could witness the reemergence of humans on the lunar surface. Four individuals – NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen – are poised to experience this event in a manner unprecedented by any previous explorers, including the Apollo astronauts who had limited visibility during their missions due to darkness.
Artemis II marks a significant mission that will take the four astronauts on a journey around the moon, surpassing any previous human exploration distance. Their primary objective is to aid in the preparations for Artemis III, the mission that will mark the return of human presence on the moon after nearly half a century.
While their responsibilities include testing the spacecraft’s various systems and capabilities, the quartet also serves as essential subjects for human experimentation in space.
Unlike the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s that focused on collecting lunar rock samples and conducting surface experiments, research on how the human body responds to deep space remained largely unexplored.
Artemis aims to fill this gap in knowledge.
“Our foremost priority is ensuring the safe return of our crew,” remarked Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist, during a recent press briefing.
“To achieve this, we have developed an extensive research strategy that will underpin all upcoming Artemis missions to guarantee safe space travel and return of all crew members. This effort commences with enhancing our understanding of the space environment.”
Human physiology is not naturally adapted for space travel. Our evolution is tailored for life on Earth, shielded by the planet’s magnetosphere from cosmic rays and radiation. However, in our quest to venture into space and potentially inhabit celestial bodies like the moon or Mars, understanding how to safeguard ourselves becomes imperative.
AVATAR (not the movie)
Several experiments are already underway.
One of these experiments, ARCHeR (Artemis Research for Crew Health & Readiness), involves astronauts wearing a wrist-mounted device resembling a watch that monitors their sleep patterns, stress levels, and cognitive functions before, during, and after the mission.
“We are essentially the primary subjects in this grand experiment,” Hansen shared with CBC News. “We are currently devoting significant effort to gathering data on our bodies… However, much of the scientific analysis is conducted behind the scenes on our behalf. We are the experiment.”
The findings from these experiments will inform future mission planning and crew support activities.
Another initiative, AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response), aims to study the effects of deep space, particularly extreme radiation and microgravity, on the human body. Given the limitations of conducting intrusive tests on astronauts in confined spaces, NASA has developed AVATAR, acting as a surrogate for the crew members.
Blood samples were collected from all four astronauts and placed on a chip roughly the size of a USB flash drive. This collection serves as a representation of their
