Mars mission carries a high health risk

Experts warn of health risks of Mars mission

04/04/2014

According to NASA, the first manned mission to Mars will take place around the year 2030. In addition to technical challenges, the main focus of mission planning is the health risks for the astronauts to which they would be exposed during their stay on Mars. Even when traveling to the International Space Station (ISS), which are much shorter than a flight to Mars, astronauts often complain about health conditions such as nausea, blurred vision and weakness.

Warning about unpredictable health risks on Mars mission
Scientists at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the US submitted a report Wednesday that said NASA's limits are most likely exceeded on a Mars mission. „In these types of missions, crews are likely to be exposed to the known risks defined by current health standards as acceptable, but also to a range of risks that are poorly described, uncertain, and perhaps unpredictable“, the physicians write from the IOM in their report.

The NASA-planned Mars mission is scheduled to take place around the year 2030 and will take about 18 months. So far, astronauts are only sent to a lower Earth orbit to the ISS, where they usually stay between three and six months. Already in these relatively short missions, the crew often suffers from vision, nausea and general weakness problems. If planning for a manned mission to Mars becomes more concrete, a detailed ethical examination must take place, the scientists demand. For long missions, according to experts, in addition to the known health problems also bone loss, cancer and other serious diseases occur.

Astronauts should be able to decide for themselves whether to participate in a Mars mission
„The IOM Committee notes that relaxing current health standards outside the established processes, just to allow for long-range exploratory missions, would be arbitrary and therefore ethically unjustifiable“, The physicians summarize in their report. However, exceptions could be created. Whether such an exception could be made in an individual case, ultimately NASA must decide.

In the report, the scientists formulated conditions on which such a decision can be made. So there should be three levels of decision. „In the first stage of decision-making, NASA must weigh whether and under what conditions ethical missions that barely meet current health standards are acceptable“, it says in the IOM report. „The second level concerns mission-specific decision-making, where NASA must weigh whether a particular mission is ethically acceptable.“ The third stage refers to the selection of the participating crew. Every astronaut should be allowed to decide for himself if he should participate in such a mission. In addition, a lifelong health care of astronauts by NASA is to ensure. The expert group leader, Jeffrey Kahn of the John Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics in Baltimore, emphasized at the presentation of the report that setting conditions to exceed the limits set previously was a very complex task.

If a Mars mission actually takes place in 2030, it would be the first manned space flight with such a long distance to Earth. So far, only unmanned robotic vehicles were sent to the red planet, most recently the research robot „Curiosity“. (Ag)

Picture: Johannes Schätzler