Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 186, the next one-year missions. I'm Gary Jordan and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts,

scientists, engineers, astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human

spaceflight. Many may remember the popular one-year mission in recent history where Scott Kelly of

NASA and Michael Corneenko 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 like Christina Cook have spent closer to a year.

And we have a good amount of data from crew members on these long-duration flights and quite a lot from short-duration missions during Shoto where a crew member spent just a few weeks in space.

But to travel deeper into space, we'll need a good understanding of what happens to the human body for

missions that surpass a year. A human mission to Mars will be just shy of two years at a minimum.

To better understand this question, NASA is planning extended missions aboard

the International Space Station, a bit closer to home. It sounds like a general question, right?

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

space? But the truth is that this single question is being asked from so many

angles. What happens to the gene expression? The vascular calcium, vision, bones, the neurovestibular system.

Many researchers want to know the answers.

So an integrated protocol called Cypher is bringing together a huge number of disciplines to investigate as many interesting aspects to an extended human mission on the International Space Station as possible.

Of course, Cypher is an acronym and stands for the complement of integrated protocols for human

exploration research. Returning to the podcast is Dr. Sherry Ubray. She

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