{"id":7604,"date":"2026-04-08T11:24:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/how-artemis-ii-avatars-reveal-the-impact-of-space-on-astronauts-florida-today\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T11:24:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:24:29","slug":"how-artemis-ii-avatars-reveal-the-impact-of-space-on-astronauts-florida-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/how-artemis-ii-avatars-reveal-the-impact-of-space-on-astronauts-florida-today\/","title":{"rendered":"How Artemis II 'AVATARs' reveal the impact of space on astronauts – Florida Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not all moon observations and photos on the Artemis II mission. Personal AVATARs are flying alongside the Artemis II astronauts<\/a>, 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<\/a> 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\u2019s what NASA\u2019s AVATAR<\/a> 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<\/a>. 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.
\u201cLiterally, 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,\u201d said Carnell.
While the blood was drawn last fall, it was stored and injected into the chips just days before launch.
\u201cWhen they land, we\u2019ll take the chips out and do analysis on all the cells and how they changed and what happened in the deep space environment,\u201d 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\u2019s 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? <\/strong>Is there a launch today? NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin launch schedule in Florida<\/a><\/span>
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.
\u201cSo if we know ahead of time, let\u2019s 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 \u2014 it could be brain organoids. It could be different types of organ systems,\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.
\u201cThe 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,\u201d 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.
\u201cSo say a nuclear event happens on the ground. How would you treat somebody for acute radiation sickness?\u201d said Carnell. \u201cWell, it\u2019s the same acute radiation sickness if you\u2019re exposed to high solar weather.\u201d
As for deeper space exploration, these chips could be a game changer before the first humans ever arrive on another planet.
\u201cImagine if we could send these ahead of time to Mars to really understand what\u2019s going to happen to humans,\u201d Carnell said.
While humans have never been to Mars, it is a future goal of NASA\u2019s beyond the upcoming Artemis missions and moon base project.
\u201cSo sending these ahead of time to Mars would allow us to know before we go,\u201d Carnell said.
\u201cWe hope to see AVATAR going on missions everywhere,\u201d said Carnell.
Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at\u00a0<\/em>bedwards@floridatoday.com<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or on X:\u00a0<\/em>@brookeofstars<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}