Do you remember when we were children, when the adults without fail, to show us they were interested in us, they would ask us the question: “And you, what do you want to be when you grow up?” And in general, we said whatever came to our heads. I wanted to be an astronaut. But that didn’t work out. I ended up becoming a doctor, a neurologist and a researcher. And the question I always asked myself: What are the limits of human adaptation to extreme environments such as high or low temperatures, high heights, extreme depth, even outer space? As you can imagine, I don’t have any patients, because you need to be in great health to be able to face such an extreme environment. This theme, became the research focus that I have followed throughout my whole career in science. My work place? The European Astronaut Centre of the European Space Agency. Who are my patients? The team of European astronauts. By the way, do you know that there are astronauts in space right now? Yes or no?
Yes! Since 2001, there has been a permanent presence of humans in space. Six astronauts from various nationalities spend six months in the International Space Station. Every six months, there are three that come down and three that go up. The last three actually just arrived yesterday to the ISS station. The ISS, or what we call it, the International Space Station, is a grand scientific laboratory. It it right here, in a “suburb” of the Earth. It’s is flying at 400 kilometers away at a velocity of 17,400 mph. The astronauts go 16 times around the Earth in 24 hours. At this velocity, instead of in 14 hours, tomorrow I could go home to my house in Paris in 24 minutes. It would be awesome!
The astronauts — Who are the astronauts? They are professionals, high level technicians. They are experimenters, because they perform the scientific experiments that we doctors and researches design. They are also the subjects of our experiments, because we do experiments on them. The question that you will ask, of course is: if the astronauts are all healthy, why do they need a doctor? They actually do, because my work within the research, like those of my colleagues, is to enable the astronauts to overcome their fiscal physical and psychological problems so they can live and work in space. An environment for which evolution didn’t prepare us. On the Earth there are two fundamental factors; the force of gravity that has conditioned our entire anatomy, the rotation of Earth and the way it alternates between light and darkness, that has conditioned all of our physiology. The force of gravity has conditioned our anatomy giving us our symmetrical body, more or less, our sense of balance, the skeleton, our muscle mass, all of this is conditioned by gravity and the fight against it.
There is no gravity in space, so what will happen? They will have balance problems, they will have decalcification. The skeleton that’s up there will have a loss of muscle mass. So… we have designed a series of physical exercises with very precise protocols which take into account all of the sectors of the body, so they can stay in shape. Because, in addition, the astronauts aren’t weighed down, so they stretch, growing about one inch. And this produces pain. Short people don’t have expectations, because when you return, you shrink —
So, at this moment, we are all working to ease this type of pain, creating a “super skin suit”, that is the suit that the astronauts use here, that we tried for the first time three months ago. I was telling you about the rotation of the Earth, and the alternating day and night. When this alternation is missing, all of our physiology is affected. And, of course, that together with all of the circadian rhythms and all of the physiological variables. From the first flights to space, we learned that the astronauts didn’t sleep well. The quantity and quality were altered. The body temperature as well. Sleep, temperature, metabolism, nutrition — because with all of these metabolic changes that I was mentioning, nutrition is affected. Above all, the environment of the space station, with the long working hours from 8 am to 10 pm, so they can execute all of the protocols, that we give them to do. And also the constant noise of ventilation, up to 60 to 70 decibels to circulate the air.
The light that isn’t that bright. However, in 30 years of research, we have been able to improve a few of the working conditions. The simple things: a comfortable sleeping bag, which produces in space the same pleasing sensation that we feel when we go to lie down and are between the sheets. Also, the nutrition: It’s not only to cover nutritional and metabolic needs — because you have to be really hungry to want to eat this —
But also, to take well into account the psychological aspect and the taste. That’s why the astronaut in red, Luca Parmitano, who is a friend of mine, brought to the station his Mom’s lasagna, to share with the entire crew. That’s a really special moment for them. And we realized that we as doctors and researchers, have made some progress. At this time, we are able to enable astronauts to live and work for a period of time in space and bring them back to Earth, all in all, in good health. I see a lot of young people in this room, that are very lucky because at this time, we are starting a new era in space exploration. I told you that the Space Station was in the suburbs. We are returning to the Moon now, on our way to Mars. Did you realize this? Only 12 men have had the luck to walk and work on the Moon for a few hours or almost three days. The highlight images that you are seeing right now, are not science fiction.
Our daily work at this time, from what we are seeing is going to happen: the first construction robots will recover the lunar dust, the regolith, to build the first shelter — starting in 2025. After the first building is done, three years after that, man will arrive. First, for a few days. And later, they will stay for a few months. This is very fast in the video — it will take 3 months to do it. There they will have their little house. For us it is a huge challenge. We have to anticipate new training protocols so the astronauts, when they are walking on the Moon, will be ready for anything that can happen. We also have to have or engineer health monitoring systems to be able to check on them, to detect any problems, and to be able to diagnose them. And if a problem exists, we have to intervene therapeutically, without any doctor close by. That is something very important to us. And this trip to the Moon is only the first chapter, to continue on to Mars, the target. Did you know?
After many years of working in the space field, at NASA and the European Space Agency, I am starting to realize with my colleges, that at this time, we are facing the same type of problems that our predecessors had, the doctors for the Apollo program. The Apollo program, in my youth, like all of my generation, we dreamed about this program. And inevitably, this project to put a man on the Moon, influenced my choice and professional path. And now this program is still relevant. It’s because of this, above all for the young people, I want to tell you that I really hope that you can dream and that you can live by it. In this short time that I was here with you, I hope that I have passed on a little of my enthusiasm and passion. Thank you very much.