Space

Orbital science, astronomy, remote sensing, and what lies beyond the atmosphere.

Thirty-two astronaut-like volunteers spent one or two weeks inside NASA’s HERA habitat and after a partially sleepless night their accuracy with human facial emotions fell first, hinting that short sleep loss in confinement can disturb social judgment before many other mission skills show the same strain

Thirty-two volunteers who lived through eight short NASA HERA missions gave researchers a close look at what happens when confinement and sleep loss meet in the same spaceflight-style setting. One result stood out quickly. After a partially sleepless night in the first campaign, participants became less accurate at reading facial emotions, even though many other…

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Two Axiom-1 astronauts spent 17 days aboard the ISS, reported musculoskeletal pain while living in microgravity, showed altered touch, heat and pain-control responses after landing and then moved back toward baseline three months later as researchers tracked how even a short commercial mission can disturb the way the body senses pain

The Soviet Salyut 6 space station in orbit

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A 175-day Salyut 6 mission treated boredom and isolation as hazards, using family video links, expert talks, music, mail and protected time alone as an early psychological support system meant to keep two cosmonauts informed, steady and ready for work

A mesmerizing view of Earth as seen from a space station with solar panels and satellite modules

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Ten astronauts kept private journals through six-month ISS expeditions and their own words pointed to a third-quarter morale dip while also showing how meaningful work, family contact and the habit of writing helped them preserve perspective far from home

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Six volunteers spent 105 days inside a simulated Mars spacecraft, and although daytime questionnaires suggested they were coping well, sleep recordings and cortisol revealed stress their waking reports had missed

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A review of 73 extreme-environment studies found that emotional stability and self-control helped people adapt to deep-space-style isolation, while adequate sleep repeatedly appeared as a practical requirement for future Mars crews

A mission control room filled with monitoring screens

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Sixteen astronaut-aged volunteers worked four overnight space robotics sessions and low-dose caffeine improved vigilance while blue-enriched light shifted some EEG signs of sleepiness but still left later sleep under strain

An astronaut working outside a spacecraft above Earth

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Twenty-five astronauts took 10 thinking tests before, during and after 6-month ISS missions and most scores stayed steady while early flight slowed attention, working memory and some processing speed tasks

Twenty-five astronauts completed a broad set of cognitive tests across five mission phases tied to roughly six months aboard the International Space Station and the main result was reassuring: overall performance stayed fairly stable. The clearest changes appeared early in flight, when a few tasks that depend on quick responses, working memory and sustained attention…

A propeller airplane mid-flight against a clear blue sky, captured from below

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Eighteen people played Pac-Man while tracking odd tones through 25 parabolic arcs and weightlessness left the main game intact while errors rose on the secondary task, revealing how attention can narrow even when primary performance looks steady

Weightlessness exposed a hidden slip A study in Scientific Reports followed 18 participants as they worked through a dual task during parabolic flight, the aircraft maneuvers that briefly create microgravity. The volunteers played a modified Pac-Man game as their main job while also listening for rare high tones in an auditory oddball test. Across 25…

The International Space Station orbiting above Earth

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Twenty-two astronaut-like volunteers breathed four carbon dioxide levels for less than three hours and the sharpest drop in decision-making appeared at 1,200 ppm before higher concentrations produced no clear step-by-step decline across the study’s cognition measures

Twenty-two people in a chamber at Johnson Space Center breathed air with four different amounts of carbon dioxide and the most striking dip in performance came at 1,200 ppm. The finding drew attention because the study did not show a simple pattern in which each higher level produced worse results. The work came from a…

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