Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, episode 290,

preparing humans for longer spaceflights.

I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts,

all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight.

Many may remember the popular one-year mission from 2015,

where Scott Kelly of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos

spent just about a year on the International Space Station

to understand what happens to the human body in space for that long.

Astronauts today typically spend about six months on station.

Some NASA astronauts like Christina Cook or Mark Van De Haay have spent closer to a year.

We have a good amount of data from crew members on these long-duration flights

and quite a lot from short-duration missions during shuttle,

where crew members spent just a few weeks in space.

But to travel deeper into space, we need a good understanding

of what happens to the human body for missions that surpass a full year.

Human mission to Mars, for example, is just going to be shy of two years at a minimum.

To better understand this question, NASA's human research program

wants to plan extended missions aboard the International Space Station a bit closer to home.

Sounds like a general question, right?

What happens to the human body over the course of more than a year in space?

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