ISU and NASA team up to help astronauts using mice
Dr. Shawn Bearden, associate professor of physiology at Idaho State University, is working with NASA officials to find answers about why their astronauts return from space with vision problems.
How can ISU help? Bearden and graduate students have been doing research with mice, studying problems with memory. NASA found out about their research and results, and said those mice could hold the answer to helping astronauts.
The solution? Mice in space.
“So we’re going to have mice go up on the International Space Station,” Bearden said. “They’ll be residents living on the International Space Station along with the astronauts and other science experiments.”
Bearden said he’s very excited the work his department is doing has been recognized. He said it’s important to know how to keep astronauts as safe as possible, not only during the trip but after.
“As you can imagine, there’s a lot that goes into taking people up into space,” he said. “And there’s an equal amount and perhaps even more risk and danger and issue associated with coming back down.”
Once the mice are on the space station, they will reside for a few weeks until they are euthanized in space. Then they will be sent back to Earth, where their brain tissues will be taken to be studied.
Bearden said any animal used for experimentation will eventually die; however, he said NASA is working on protocol to get the second group of mice returned from space safely.
He said this is just naturally the course to take to find out why the astronauts are having problems seeing far or up close, with it varying on how long it lasts. He said this research could prevent any astronauts in the future from having problems.
“Days, weeks or sometimes months, many astronauts are continuing to have visual problems as long as years later,” Bearden said. “And for some, in fact, it’s been many years, and they haven’t fully recovered.”
The first launch is scheduled for spring of 2015. The second will either be fall of next year or spring 2016.
