How Artemis II 'AVATARs' reveal the impact of space on astronauts – Florida Today

It’s not all moon observations and photos on the Artemis II mission. Personal AVATARs are flying alongside the Artemis II astronauts, giving NASA scientists a glimpse into how space impacts individuals.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and missions specialists Christina Kock and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremey Hansen, established a new human spaceflight record by reaching a maximum distance from Earth of 252,756 miles on April 6, breaking the Apollo 13 record.
NASA vows they will not hold that record for long. But many mysteries remain about the impact of space exploration on the human body, especially with prolonged microgravity and space radiation. That’s what NASA’s AVATAR experiment seeks to understand.
Director of NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division Lisa Carnell showed FLORIDA TODAY the AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) experiment that is now flying on Artemis II. It’s a clear chip approximately the size of a half dollar coin with intersecting red and blue lines running through it. These are essentially chips with bone marrow models with blood drawn from the crew.
“Literally, we did a blood draw from them and we sorted out the stem cells and different types of cells from the blood, and then those were injected into these chips,” said Carnell.
While the blood was drawn last fall, it was stored and injected into the chips just days before launch.
“When they land, we’ll take the chips out and do analysis on all the cells and how they changed and what happened in the deep space environment,” explained Carnell.
The chip contains two lines: a blue line which represents human bone marrow and different cells, and red line which holds the astronaut’s blood sample. Meanwhile, the hardware inside the chip helps the environment mimic the human body right down to temperature.
When is the next Florida launch? Is there a launch today? NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin launch schedule in Florida
Carnell said that the chips had to go through extensive testing to be considered safe to fly with the crew.
The hope is that they will reveal details about an individual astronaut’s health space, leading to the creation of small, personalized medical kits.
“So if we know ahead of time, let’s say hypothetically, we know who the crew will be for (Artemis) crew four or five that are going to the surface of the moon. We could send these avatars of them ahead of time and understand what kind of sensitivity they might have to radiation, to whether their immune function — it could be brain organoids. It could be different types of organ systems,” Carnell said.
While the Artemis III mission is planning to dock with either a SpaceX or Blue Origin lander in low Earth orbit, it will be Artemis IV that returns astronauts to the moon. With NASA’s recently released plans for a moon base, astronauts could be staying for longer periods than the few days of the Apollo missions.
Without the Earth’s atmosphere to protect astronauts in deep space, radiation from distant stars and our own sun can pose difficulties. And that won’t affect every astronaut the same way.
NASA could send AVATARS ahead of time on robotic landers already headed out to help understand induvial astronaut sensitivities and then make the necessary precautions before liftoff.
“The we can go ahead and ensure we have the right therapeutics in place. We can even send therapeutics and make sure they work against the space radiation environment at the same time,” Carnell said.
Scientists are working on therapeutics that could counteract radiation sickness and have so far found promise in antioxidants. These therapeutics could help not only astronauts stricken by cosmic radiation, but the worst-case scenario on Earth: a nuclear event.
“So say a nuclear event happens on the ground. How would you treat somebody for acute radiation sickness?” said Carnell. “Well, it’s the same acute radiation sickness if you’re exposed to high solar weather.”
As for deeper space exploration, these chips could be a game changer before the first humans ever arrive on another planet.
“Imagine if we could send these ahead of time to Mars to really understand what’s going to happen to humans,” Carnell said.
While humans have never been to Mars, it is a future goal of NASA’s beyond the upcoming Artemis missions and moon base project.
“So sending these ahead of time to Mars would allow us to know before we go,” Carnell said.
“We hope to see AVATAR going on missions everywhere,” said Carnell.
Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or on X: @brookeofstars.

source