As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) progressed its ambitious Artemis spaceflight program, Australian researchers including the Kolling Institute’s Academic Director Professor James Elliott tapped into their scientific expertise to offer support. James attended the NASA’s Australian researchers help astronauts tackle the health challenges of spaceflight
gauge the effectiveness of interventions, and develop new health outcome measures. “The normative data sets, developed by the MuscleMap program, could be used to compare datasets from the astronauts, so that when astronauts return from space, and they’ve experienced zero gravity exposure, you will be able
to see what’s happened to their muscle system and what has changed to their skeletal muscle composition,” James said. “The MuscleMap program could be an assessment tool to help improve their pain and performance when they’re in space, when they get home, and in preparation for future missions.”
Johnson Space Centre in Texas, where he was joined by other leading clinicians and scientists from around the world to discuss ways to reduce the spine injuries experienced by astronauts. Astronauts are exposed to a range of musculoskeletal conditions including spinal pain and muscle challenges due to the lack of gravity when in space. James said researchers already knew that physical changes to the spine during spaceflight predispose astronauts to symptomatic spine pain and nearly 50 per cent of cases presented to NASA’s musculoskeletal care team involved spine pain. “The risk of spine pain during and after spaceflight raises operational issues and concerns for the long-term spine health of astronauts and others going into space,” he said. “NASA has expressed an interest in our MuscleMap program, which is a revolutionary technique to assess whole-body skeletal muscle composition using high-resolution MRI.” The program generates a reference dataset of muscle composition across the lifespan to help diagnose pathology,
Professor James Elliott, NASA
46 NSLHD 2024 Year in Review
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