Nasa news 20151/18/2024 They experience the loss of bone and muscle, as well as vision problems and changes affecting motion and balance – and all these will be examined in detail. Researchers already know that life in orbit can have profound changes on astronauts. The Kelly Twin project will examine how individuals with the same genetic profiles respond to radically different environments. “It is a once-in-a-space-programme opportunity,” says John Charles, a senior executive with Nasa’s human research programme. Photograph: ReutersĪs a result, Scott and Mark have agreed to take part in a remarkable experiment, a year-long investigation of the impact of space travel using identical twins as subjects. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on board the International Space Station in 2010. For good measure, they are identical twins, which makes them even more important to science, for it means that Scott’s biological reactions to unearthly phenomena – zero gravity or elevated levels of radiation – can, for the first time, be compared to the responses of a genetically identical individual on the ground. In fact, Mark and Scott – who will be 51 this month – are the first siblings to fly in space and that certainly makes them special. “I cannot imagine that when Einstein came up with that idea that he ever thought there would be twins flying in space at some point in the near future.” “Certainly his spaceflight is not going to make that much difference.” Nevertheless, it is intriguing that the Kelly brothers will realise the twins-in-space thought experiment, dreamed up by Einstein and others to illustrate the effects of time dilation, a point that is stressed by Mark. “Scott and I are identical twins though I am the elder having been born six minutes before him,” adds Mark. At least, that is what relativity dictates. By contrast, the space station moves at a sedate 17,000mph relative to Earth’s surface – which means that at the end of Scott’s year of space travel, when he returns to Earth in March 2016, he will have aged only about three milliseconds less than Mark who was left behind on Earth. The effects of time dilation only become noticeable when spaceships travelling from Earth approach speeds near that of light. Not that Mark is too worried about the age differential that will develop.
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