As humanity pursues one of its most ambitious goals—sending astronauts safely to Mars—new peer-reviewed research is addressing a critical challenge of deep space travel. Keeping medications safe and effective during missions lasting years, where resupply from Earth will not be possible, is essential to crew health and mission success—and, until this point, had not been thoroughly studied. The research, spearheaded by Stantec’s Health Sciences Advisory team, in collaboration with NASA’s Johnson Space Center and academic partners, was published in April in two companion papers in Critical Reviews in Toxicology.
As space agencies plan for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, medications carried onboard spacecraft may exceed their labeled shelf lives and degrade under unique spaceflight conditions. Like the astronauts themselves, pharmaceuticals will be exposed to increased radiation and elevated carbon dioxide levels. What’s more, rather than using original containers designed for long-term storage, NASA may consider repackaging medications to meet the strict weight and storage constraints required for flight. Over time, these factors can cause pharmaceuticals to degrade, creating higher levels of potentially harmful byproducts. NASA engaged Stantec to help develop a first-of-its-kind framework to identify this risk and support safer medical planning for long-duration exploration missions.
“This research represents an important step toward making deep space exploration safer and more achievable,” said Andrey Massarsky, PhD, lead author, and senior supervising health scientist at Stantec. “Human missions to Mars will require resilient systems that support crew health far from Earth. Our work with NASA is helping us better understand how medicines perform over time in space and adds to the scientific foundation needed for the next era of exploration.”
The first paper outlines a framework that applies established chemical risk assessment principles to spaceflight pharmaceuticals in five steps:
Because only a small number of medications have ever been studied in actual spaceflight conditions, the framework uses multiple lines of evidence—including published studies, terrestrial data, and advanced computational modeling—to assess risk even when direct spaceflight data is unavailable. The approach also gives mission planners an efficient way to evaluate many medications and prioritize where additional considerations may be needed.
The second paper demonstrates how the approach can be applied to medications under consideration for exploration missions, including antibiotics, pain treatments, neurological medications, and oral contraceptives. The results identified medications that may warrant further review, while showing others were unlikely to pose health risks under expected mission scenarios.
The findings can help inform decisions about pharmaceutical selection, packaging, storage, substitution strategies, and future testing protocols for exploration-class missions. The work also demonstrates how advanced-risk science can solve complex health challenges in extreme environments.
“We’re quite literally venturing into new territory here,” Massarsky said. “In reviewing the available literature relevant to our case studies, we found only one other study applicable to the conditions for deep space exploration. Of course, more research in this area will be needed. Nevertheless, it’s exciting to play a small part in helping take the next ‘giant leap for mankind.’”
Explore the full findings and learn more about Stantec’s Health Sciences Advisory team:
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Stantec research helps solve a critical challenge for missions to Mars – Environmental XPRT
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