Sending a manned mission to Mars has been the goal of national and international space agencies for decades. What once seemed like science fiction could become science fact, with Nasa administrator Charles Bolden saying in 2015 “we are farther down the path to sending humans to Mars than at any point in Nasa’s history”. The current target is for astronauts to leave for the Red Planet in the 2030s. But rocketing human beings to a planet that - depending on its orbit - can be 249 million miles away from terra firma, comes with its own complications. This is where Beth Healey comes in.
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Healey, 29, a polar scientist and former European Space Agency (Esa) Research MD Concordia, spending her time investigating how astronauts’ health could be affected in extreme environments far from home. A former junior doctor at a London hospital, she has researched how to practice medicine in extreme conditions: in Greenland and Svalbard, a Norwegian island halfway to the North Pole where the Sun never sets in the summer. “I initially went to Greenland for the skiing,” she jokes, “and ended up liking working in remote environments”.
Though it may seem like a world away, the International Space Station (ISS) - the low-Earth pit stop where a coalition of national space agencies send astronauts and scientists - is relatively a short hop from Earth. “Astronauts can be evacuated quite quickly if they were to have medical problems,” explains Healey. “Typically you’re looking at half a day.”
It won’t be as easy to hitch a ride home for those on future manned missions to Mars: the distances involved mean that when an astronaut embarks on a journey to the Red Planet, they’ll be in it for the long haul, come what may.
This has a number of knock-on effects. In a worst case scenario, if someone falls ill they’ll need to be treated in space rather than shipped back to Earth. Plus, simply knowing you can’t hop home has an enormous psychological impact; moments of isolation could quickly spiral into a deep fugue if unchecked. But all of this is uncertain; medical theory rather than medical practice, not least because no-one has yet embarked on an interplanetary mission deep into our solar system.
To estimate how astronauts would react to the long journey, isolation and physical and mental stresses of space, in 2015 Healey undertook a mission of her own: to Antarctica, and a base called Concordia.
Every year, the Esa sends a doctor out to the platform located more than 1,000 miles from the geographic South Pole to conduct research experiments. During the year-and-a-bit Healey was on the platform, seven separate protocols focused on the psychological and physiological effects of living in remote areas were run, 3,200 metres above sea level where the average temperature across the year is -50 degrees Celsius.
Healey didn’t initially find the sheer desolation of the Antarctic environment surprising when she landed on Antarctica in a Twin Otter polar plane. “I remember when I first arrived thinking: ‘Wow, this is a long way away.’ I’m quite used to being in the Arctic so the snow and desolate landscape didn’t really phase me too much but I guess it’s how long the journey takes that makes you realise how far away it is.” An overland journey took her to the base, where reality hit. “Finally you see Concordia on the horizon. You realise just how isolated it is.”
But that remoteness serves the Esa well.
“Concordia is a good analogue for the isolation you’d expect in longer-duration space flights, but it’s also helping the day-to-day missions we conduct now as well,” says Healey. While Esa astronauts carry out experiments at the International Space Station to calculate the effects of space on the human body, the number of astronauts that make it to the low-orbit staging post is small, and so the number of experiments is limited. “We augment our ISS research with experiments at Concordia,” Healey explains.
In some respects Concordia, which is maintained by a team of French and Italian scientists, mimics outer space well: a prolonged polar night means the Sun disappears for 105 days, while the altitude of the base means inhabitants are constantly struggling with low-level chronic hypoxia. “We’re not talking Everest,” admits Healey, “but living at Mont Blanc for a year”. The constant physical and psychological pressure on residents of the incredibly remote base over the course of a year is a good analogue for the isolation and stresses of space, but there are some limitations. “The main one is that you can’t mimic microgravity, which is a contributing factor to a lot of problems astronauts have in space,” says Healey. “Having said that, I think we can learn a lot.”
Work first tested at Concordia that has made its way to the ISS is a 10-part cognition test that astronauts undergo to evaluate their memory, reaction times and risk-taking behaviour. They’re constantly tested and if their scores begin to drop, Earth-based support staff advise them how best to address any health issue before it gets worse.
Having lived in that remote an environment, carrying out experiments that will help future generations of astronauts better explore the boundaries of space, it seems likely Healey would catch the bug to go up into space herself.
“I get asked this question quite a lot and if I’m honest, before I worked for Esa it wasn’t a big thing on my life plan,” she begins. “But it’s inspired me. Certainly, I’ll be applying for astronaut training when it next comes around, for sure.”
There is one caveat, though: “For me, the ISS is probably far enough.”
Want to know more? Beth Healey will be speaking at this year's WIRED Health conference in London. Join hundreds of healthcare, pharmaceutical and technology influencers and leaders at the fourth annual event on March 9 at 30 Euston Square. Buy tickets and learn more here.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
