French scientist explains physical and mental changes in the space

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for the first full-flight test of Gaganyaan in December 2020. In an interview with ETV Bharat, Dr Audrey BERTHIER from France shared the information about the upcoming human spaceflight programme.

Bengaluru: As ISRO gears up with its Gaganyaan programme which plans the manned mission to space, French scientist explains what are the physiological and psychological changes the astronaut crew would face in the space.

In an interaction with ETV Bharat, Dr Audrey BERTHIER, a Biomedical Engineer from France said that due to microgravity, what changes occur when an astronaut goes to space.

Dr Audrey said, "As space is a very specific environment and due to microgravity, the human body gets some changes, like bone, muscular changes, cardiovascular changes, immune system changes, vestibular changes and so on. To limit these side-effects, astronauts have to maintain their health and for that purpose, astronauts have to follow some health measures. While limiting the side-effects for the astronauts, they will be provided countermeasures like mitigation measures, which will limit the side-effects of the above-mentioned changes,"

"There are various countermeasures like physical countermeasures, pharmaceutical countermeasures, nutritional countermeasures and also in future, it could be the artificial gravity. So it is very important to provide countermeasures to the astronauts for their good health," she said.

"To maintain the health of the astronauts, we provide the equipment, kits and drugs which allows the crew to manage any kind of usual medial event that may occur onboard. In fact, for the health monitoring, we conduct the health checkups before the flight and after the flight and there are some measurements which also occurs during the flight. The important aspect comes when the crew is in the lower orbit there is a possibility of the medical evacuation. And there is also a possibility to communicate with the ground staff to convey the medical problems," she added.

"When you are thinking about the future long-duration human space flight towards the destinations like moon and mars, these changes occur due to the higher distance. In such time, the crew have to become more autonomous including the medical aspects. For this, we provide them with medical equipment and the Assistix technology with which they can detect the problem of their own health as soon as possible. We know that the health-related issues are evolving very fast and maybe space can also make a good contribution to mutualise the health-related problems, she further added.

Speaking about the extra measures for Indian astronauts for the Gaganyaan mission, she told that, there is nothing such speciality in the planning right now. We have to wait for the perfect moment.