The biomedical challenge associated with the Artemis space program

Abstract

Human space flights fostered dreams and technological advances of humankind in the last centuries, since Jules Verne's visionary anticipations. However, exploration of the outer space challenges human adaptive response to a hostile environment in which cosmic radiation, microgravity, physical confinement, vacuum, and altered magnetic field, overall sum up to threaten human health. The Artemis program is organizing international efforts aiming to return to the Moon, and enabling a future Mars mission. A unified international human space flight policy should clarify the rationale, the acceptable risk, and the required countermeasures to reach the proposed objectives. To address such a challenge, proper medical and technical countermeasures should be developed for mitigating health hazard secondary to prolonged exposure to both radiation and weightlessness. Overall, development of artificial gravity devices, proper radiation shielding strategy, and the integrated network of biosensors that could provide a timely detection of health markers, constitutes indispensable requirements in supporting the next generation of human space flights. Thereby, to achieve such endeavors we need to bring in multidisciplinary skills and technologies in an integrated way. The Artemis program offers the opportunity to advance the basic knowledge and medical technologies in fulfilling such requirements, while adopting the prudent strategy of reducing to a minimum short- and long-term risk that space travelers shall face.