Studies: Intermittent artificial gravity exposure

NASA's Human Research Program will fund four proposals that will investigate the sensorimotor, cardiovascular, visual, musculoskeletal, and behavioral responses in humans to intermittent artificial gravity during bed rest. This work is helping NASA develop the resources and countermeasures necessary to ensure astronauts remain healthy as we venture beyond low-Earth orbit and head out to study an asteroid and eventually Mars.

These four proposals will complement seven studies recently selected by the ESA (European Space Agency). The selected proposals will evaluate the possible benefits of artificial gravity on human health in response to the detrimental effects of spaceflight as simulated in a bed rest analog. Analogs provide conditions that are comparable to spaceflight; in this case the incline of the patients and their immobility mimics some of the physiological effects observed in astronauts due to microgravity.

All of the selected studies by NASA and ESA will be conducted in the :envihab facility located in Cologne, Germany at the German Aerospace Center Institute for Aerospace Medicine. The :envihab is a state of the art facility for conducting ground-based research in support of spaceflight. Projects will be conducted in the :envihab bed rest module and will make use of the :envihab short-arm centrifuge. Subjects will undergo 60 days of bed rest at a 6 degrees head-down tilt with short-term exposures to artificial gravity using a human-scale centrifuge. They will be ambulatory for two weeks prior to and after bed rest. This time will allow for baseline data collections and recovery after bed rest.

As a collaboration through the International Space Life Sciences Working Group, NASA and ESA released a joint research solicitation in November 2015. Four U.S. projects were selected from 25 proposals received in response to NASA Research Announcement NNJ15ZSA001N-AGBR: Physiological and Behavioral Responses in Humans to Intermittent Artificial Gravity during Bed Rest. Science and technology experts from academia and the government reviewed the proposals. The selected proposals come from four institutions in three states. If fully implemented, the grants are worth a total of about $3 million during a two-year period.

All of the selected projects will enter a phase in which NASA and ESA will work with the investigators to define the parameters of the research to be conducted in the :envihab analog. This will enable the studies to use the same set of subjects with minimal overlap and interference. Here is the complete list of the selected U.S. proposals, principal investigators and organizations:

Mathias Basner, University of Pennsylvania, "Hyper.Campus – Effects of Artificial Gravity on Structural and Functional Plasticity During Head-Down Tilt Bed Rest"
Eric Bershad, Baylor College of Medicine, "SPACE-CENT: Studying the Physiological and Anatomical Cerebral Effects of CENTrifugation and Head Down Tilt Bed Rest"
Rachael Seidler, University of Michigan, "Does Intermittent or Continuous Artificial Gravity Counteract Long Duration Bed Rest Induced Neurocognitive Declines?"
Scott Smith, NASA Johnson Space Center, "Musculoskeletal Physiology, Metabolomics, Proteomics, and Metallomics: Response to Continuous and Intermittent Artificial Gravity during and after 60-d Head-down Tilt Bed Rest"