Spaceflight has always been met with awe by the general public and may also have strong implications for medical training for future physicians, regardless of specialty or practice. Within the near future, the commercialization of spaceflight will lead to an unprecedented surge in travelers to space. With this increase, the understanding of space medicine and potential physiological risks of microgravity will only become more important for doctors to understand. Historically, teaching education on how the body responds to various different environments and environmental changes has been a longstanding core to medical education. Thus, education about the physiological, pathologic, and histologic changes to weightlessness over prolonged periods of time will likely provide additional insights to space medicine, as well as how medicine can be practiced here on Earth. The addition of space medicine to the medical curriculum will likely not only benefit future space medicine physicians, but also likely benefit all physicians and human health on Earth. In this manuscript, we discuss the various risks that astronauts undergo, as well as current space medicine education initiatives on Earth.

Realizing packaged state-of-the-art performance of monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) operating at millimeter wavelengths presents significant challenges in terms of electrical interface circuitry and physical construction. For instance, even with the aid of modern electromagnetic simulation tools, modeling the interaction between the MMIC and its package embedding circuit can lack the necessary precision to achieve optimum device performance. Physical implementation also introduces inaccuracies and requires iterative interface component substitution that can produce variable results, is invasive and risks damaging the MMIC. This paper describes a novel method for in situ optimization of packaged millimeter-wave devices using a pulsed ultraviolet laser to remove pre-selected areas of interface circuit metallization. The method was successfully demonstrated through the optimization of a 183 GHz low noise amplifier destined for use on the MetOp-SG meteorological satellite series. An improvement in amplifier output return loss from an average of 12.9 dB to 22.7 dB was achieved across an operational frequency range of 175–191 GHz and the improved circuit reproduced. We believe that our in situ tuning technique can be applied more widely to planar millimeter-wave interface circuits that are critical in achieving optimum device performance.

Many rocky exoplanets are heavier and larger than the Earth and have higher surface gravity. This makes space-flight on these worlds very challenging because the required fuel mass for a given payload is an exponential function of planetary surface gravity, exp(g0). We find that chemical rockets still allow for escape velocities on Super-Earths up to 10× Earth mass. More massive rocky worlds, if they exist, would require other means to leave the planet, such as nuclear propulsion. This is relevant for space colonization and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) is the most widely applied model organism in current biological science. As a widespread opportunistic pathogen, E. coli can survive not only by symbiosis with human, but also outside the host as well, which necessitates the evaluation of its response to the space environment. Therefore, to keep humans safe in space, it is necessary to understand how the bacteria respond to this environment. Despite extensive investigations for a few decades, the response of E. coli to the real space environment is still controversial. To better understand the mechanisms how E. coli overcomes harsh environments such as microgravity in space and to investigate whether these factors may induce pathogenic changes in E. coli that are potentially detrimental to astronauts, we conducted detailed genomics, transcriptomic and proteomic studies on E. coli that experienced 17 days of spaceflight. By comparing two flight strains LCT-EC52 and LCT-EC59 to a control strain LCT-EC106 that was cultured under the same temperature conditions on the ground, we identified metabolism changes, polymorphism changes, differentially expressed genes and proteins in the two flight strains. The flight strains differed from the control in the utilization of more than 30 carbon sources. Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and one deletion were identified in the flight strains. The expression level of more than 1000 genes altered in flight strains. Genes involved in chemotaxis, lipid metabolism and cell motility express differently. Moreover, the two flight strains also differed extensively from each other in terms of metabolism, transcriptome and proteome, indicating the impact of space environment on individual cells is heterogeneous and probably genotype-dependent. This study presents the first systematic profile of E. coli genome, transcriptome and proteome after spaceflight, which helps to elucidate the mechanism that controls the adaptation of microbes to the space environment.

Since experimentation with plants began in space, a wide range of information has been gained regarding how this unique environment affects the biology of seeds. Seed biology experiments in this milieu have addressed aspects of seed storage, seed germination and metabolism, seedling orientation and seed production by flowering plants. Construction of hardware that provides a suitable growth environment in microgravity has been especially challenging because of the consequences posed by microgravity for fluid and gas distribution around the plant. Fluid shifting causes seed hydration kinetics to occur at a faster rate in microgravity than in 1 g; however, it also induces hypoxic metabolism during the seed germination process. In the absence of a detectable gravitational force, seedling roots grow according to their embryonic orientation and then initiate random walk movements. Light and oxygen gradients are the primary stimuli that orient root growth in this environment. For seed development to occur in spaceflight, well-ventilated growth chambers are necessary to support the carbohydrate supply needs of the developing embryos, and to provide the necessary humidity gradient for anthers to successfully dehisce and release pollen. The dry weight of seeds formed in space is lower than that in ground controls, and seed storage reserves are altered. Seed storage phenomena in spaceflight depend on whether or not oxygen and moisture are present – if not, viability exceeds that of seeds stored under comparable conditions on the ground. Because of the key role to be played by seeds in future advanced life support scenarios in space, more research is needed on the implications of this unique environment for seed biology.