美国威尔康奈尔医学中心C. E. Mason等研究人员合作揭示SpaceX Inspiration4民用机组人员的分子和生理变化。该研究于2024年6月11日在线发表于国际一流学术期刊《自然》。

研究人员表示，载人航天历来由政府机构管理，如美国国家航空航天局的双胞胎研究，但新的商业航天机会向更广泛的人群开放了航天。2021年，美国太空探索技术公司（SpaceX）的“灵感4号”（Inspiration4）任务首次将所有民用机组人员送入低地球轨道，其中包括最年轻的美国宇航员（29岁）、飞行中新颖的实验技术（手持超声波成像、智能手表可穿戴设备和免疫分析）、眼球排列测量以及深入的多原子分子和细胞分析新方案。

研究人员报告了为期3天的太空飞行任务的主要发现，这次任务引起了广泛的生理和应激反应、以眼球错位为指标的神经前庭变化以及神经认知功能的改变，其中一些与长期太空飞行相匹配，但几乎所有这些在返回地球后都与基线（飞行前）无异。总之，这些初步的民用太空飞行数据表明，短期飞行任务不会对健康造成重大风险，而且还为从解剖学、细胞学、生理学和认知层面测量人体对太空飞行的最初适应阶段提供了丰富的机会。最后，这些方法和结果为建立一个开放的、快速扩展的宇航员生物医学数据库奠定了基础，该数据库可为私人和政府赞助的太空任务的对策开发提供信息。

附：英文原文

Title: Molecular and physiologic changes in the SpaceX Inspiration4 civilian crew

Author: Jones, C. W., Overbey, E. G., Lacombe, J., Ecker, A. J., Meydan, C., Ryon, K., Tierney, B., Damle, N., MacKay, M., Afshin, E. E., Foox, J., Park, J., Nelson, T., Suhail, M., Byhaqui, S. G., Aslam, B., Tali, U. A., Nisa, L., Menon, P., Patel, C. O., Khan, S. A., Ebert, D. J., Everson, A., Schubert, M. C., Ali, N. N., Sarma, M. S., Kim, J., Houerbi, N., Grigorev, K., Garcia Medina, S., Summers, A. J., Gu, J., Altin, J. A., Fattahi, A., Hirzallah, M. I., Wu, J. H., Stahn, A. C., Beheshti, A., Klotz, R., Ortiz, V., Yu, M., Patras, L., Matei, I., Lyden, D., Melnick, A., Banerjee, N., Mullane, S., Kleinman, A., Loesche, M., Menon, A. S., Donoviel, D. B., Urquieta, E., Mateus, J., Sargsyan, A. E., Shelhamer, M., Zenhausern, F., Bershad, E. M.

Issue&Volume: 2024-06-11

Abstract: Human spaceflight has historically been managed by government agencies, such as the NASA Twins Study1, but new commercial spaceflight opportunities have opened spaceflight to a broader population. In 2021, the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission launched the first-ever all civilian crew to low Earth orbit, which included the youngest American astronaut (age 29), novel in-flight experimental technologies (handheld ultrasound imaging, smartwatch wearables, and immune profiling), ocular alignment measurements, and new protocols for in-depth, multi-omic molecular and cellular profiling. Here we report the primary findings from the 3-day spaceflight mission, which induced a broad range of physiological and stress responses, neurovestibular changes indexed by ocular misalignment, and altered neurocognitive functioning, some of which match long-term spaceflight2, but almost all of which did not differ from baseline (pre-flight) after return to Earth. Overall, these preliminary civilian spaceflight data suggest that short-duration missions do not pose a significant health risk, and moreover present a rich opportunity to measure the earliest phases of adaptation to spaceflight in the human body at anatomical, cellular, physiologic, and cognitive levels. Finally, these methods and results lay the foundation for an open, rapidly expanding biomedical database for astronauts3, which can inform countermeasure development for both private and government-sponsored space missions.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07648-x

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07648-x