Space flight doesn’t just affect human physiology; it can also make microbes much more infectious, researchers from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) have found. “Space flight alters cellular and physiological responses in astronauts including the immune response,” said ASU’s Cheryl Nickerson, who led a project aboard NASA’s space shuttle. “However, relatively little […]
Tag Archives | zero gravity
Fighting Fit For Space Travel
The suppression of the human immune system in space was first observed forty years ago during the Apollo missions when more than half the astronauts reported a bacterial or viral infection either during or shortly after their mission. To further study the effects of micro-gravity on the immune system, a shuttle flight in 1991 carried […]