What will being stranded in space on the ISS for so long do to the Nasa astronauts?

Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore, 61, and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams, 59, only planned to be floating in the endless abyss of space for a week. Eigh🔯t days tops.

But the two Nasa astronauts have been stuck in the International Space Station since June after a raft of technical hiccups.

And they’ll be h🔜undreds of miles above your head for a little while longer – Nasa confirmed that the February rescue mission has been pushed back.

SpaceX, the rocket maker owned by Elon Musk, needs another month to get its new Dragon capsule (Butch a🙈nd Suni’s taxi home, basically) up and ready.

‘Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeav𝓀our that r💦equires great attention to detail,’ Nasa’s Steve Sitch said yesterday.

This means the off-woཧrlders will live in the ISS for roughly eight months.

But how will this affect Butch and Suni’s bodies?

Space, it’s pretty safe to say, is hostile to us Earthlings. There’s no gravity to keep you and all the bones and organs jiggling around insidꦏe of you in place.

Why stand when you can float?

‘Long-duratꦑion spaceflight is not g𝕴ood for the human body,’ says Dr Kirsty Lindsay, Assistant Professor in Rehabilitation Sciences within Northumbria University’s . 

‘Floating in weightlessness means we don’t nee✃d to use our 🎐muscles or bones, so our bodies start to slowly reabsorb them.’

Standing up, for example, becomes pointless.

Muscles that help to maintain our posture – think back, neck, calves and quadriceps – ꦦin only two weeks.

This also includes the heart, which does😼n’t have to pump as hard up in the stars as there’s low gravity. The muscꦡle will shrink about 1/40th of an ounce a week.

Astronauts have to stay fit while on the ISS, which is basically kitted out with an entire gym, to combat this loss of bone and muscle mass, which is ca𝓡lled ‘deconditioning’, says Liz Johns, the interim head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency.

‘This deconditioning is counteracted by a strict exercise regime that all astronauts⛎ keep up throughout their time on the International Space Stationꦚ,’ she says.

Blood flow is a two-man operation. The heart pumps blood up while gravity drags it down. So, without its colleague, the heart 🐈is suddenly pushing up too much blood for our head to handle.

All this liquid pools in the back of our eyes, causing a condition cal🍷led oedema which imp💝acts the optic nerve and can .

Some😼 astronauts like Michael R. Barratt, who stayed on the ISS for six months in 2009, became more f🌞arsighted. He also had blemishes on his retina as his.

‘Puffy face and chicken legs’

When we suddenly have too much blood in our heads and too little in🍒 our legs, what will that do to Butch and Suꦏni?

‘The answer is “puffy face and chicken legs”,’ Professor Mike Tipton from the University of Portsmouth’sღ (School of Psychology, Sport and Health Sciences) told Metro.

‘Caused by blood volume shifts in space due to microgravity. On return to Earth, gravity makes blood pool in lower extremities increas🐷ing the chance of fainting when upright.’

As their bodies adapt to w♕eightlessness, Butch and Suni will likely lose weight. Most astronauts lose about 5% of their body weight during a four to six-mont🌟h stay in orbit.

Bones demineralise and lose strength without gravity. As a comparison, olde♐r men and women loseof their bone mass every year – astronauts every month.

While our muscles and bones help us move, it’s the brain calling the shots. Researchers have 🌳found that extended stays in space ca🉐n rewire the parts of our brain that specialise in movement and orientation, as was the case for a .

They might come back taller

We do, however, have g💝ood news fo😼r any 5’11” men who list themselves as 6′ on their Tinder bios. Without that pesky gravity squishing you down, people when in space as their spines elongate.

However, this can lead t🔯o back pain whi🃏le in space.

Gravity – or rather, the lack🌼 of it – isn’t the only major diff♕erence between life on Earth and in space.

Radiation is typicalꦺly not a big worry 🦹for the inhabitants of Earth because the atmosphere acts as a cocoon, so most of it is deflected.

However, th♕e ISS doesn’t have this high-level security system. High-energy atomic nuclei from exploding 🙈stars throughout the galaxy can penetrate spaceships, spacesuits and skin.

These big and heavy nuclei heighten the chances that astronauts will die of cancer as welꦑl as damage their DNA and crash into their white blood cells.

Things will also stay 🐬weird even when Butch and Suni finally reunite with Earth’s gravꦐity.

‘When the astronauts return to Earth, and gravity starts to pull them downwards again this can cause proꦿblems,’ say🤪s Dr Lindsay.

‘The low blood volume can cause dizziness and fainting, with female astronauts particularly at risk in t꧂he first few days after their return. They will also both✃ have to have a period of reconditioning exercise and training once back on Earth, which usually lasts around 45 days.’

The longest any human has been off Earth is almost 438 days, a title held by Dr Valery Polyakov on the Ru👍ssian space station Mir in 1994 and 1995. 

While spaceflight isn’t the most fun thing ❀in the world for the human body, every trip, however short, is vital, says Dr Lindsay.

‘As missions go beyond Low Earth Orbit, visiting the Moon and Mars, the time spent in microgravity will get longer,๊’ she says, ‘so every opportunity we have to understa🌄nd how to keep people healthy in space adds to our knowledge.’

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