Acta astronautica
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In November 2000, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its partners in the International Space Station (ISS) ushered in a new era of space flight: permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit. As the culmination of the last four decades of human space flight activities. the ISS focuses our attention on what we have learned to date. and what still must be learned before we can embark on future exploration endeavors. Space medicine has been a primary part of our past success in human space flight, and will continue to play a critical role in future ventures. ⋯ In order to gain a complete understanding and create the tools and technologies needed to enable successful exploration. space medicine will become even more of a highly collaborative discipline. Future missions will require the partnership of physicians, biomedical scientists, engineers, and mission planners. This paper will examine the future of space medicine as it relates to human space exploration: what is necessary to keep a crew alive in space, how we do it today, how we will accomplish this in the future, and how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to achieve future goals.
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The selection, definition, and development phases of a Life Sciences flight research experiment has been consistent throughout the past decade. The implementation process, however, has changed significantly within the past two years. This change is driven primarily by the shift from highly integrated, dedicated research missions on platforms with well defined processes to self contained experiments with stand alone operations on platforms which are being concurrently designed. ⋯ The complexity of implementing investigations increases with the logistics needed to perform the experiment. Examples of logistics issues include- hardware unique to the experiment; large up and down mass and volume needs; access to crew and hardware during the ascent or descent phases; maintenance of hardware and supplies with a limited shelf life,- baseline data collection schedules with lengthy sessions or sessions close to the launch or landing; onboard stowage availability, particularly cold stowage; and extensive training where highly proficient skills must be maintained. As the ISS processes become better defined, experiment implementation will meet new challenges due to distributed management, on-orbit resource sharing, and adjustments to crew availability pre- and post-increment.
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In tadpoles of the Southern Clawed Toad (Xenopus laevis), the effects of an exposure to hypergravity of several days duration on the development of the roll-induced static vestibuloocular reflex (rVOR) were investigated. Special attention was given to the onset of the 9 or 12 days lasting 3G-period during early life. First recordings of the rVOR characteristics for complete 360 degrees rolls of the tadpoles were performed 24 hrs after the end of the 3G-period. ⋯ Methodological approaches are discussed which will be useful in the further description of the critical period. They include studies on the neuronogenesis and synaptic maturation within the vestibular pathways as well as on the fundamentals of buoyancy control during swimming. A modular but closed mini-system for experimental use is described which allows survival periods lasting many weeks and multiple types of treatments of developing aquatic animals in orbit, controlled automatically.