A second space age spanning omics, platforms and medicine across orbits

Christopher E Mason^{1

2}, James Green³, Konstantinos I Adamopoulos^{4

5}, Evan E Afshin⁶, Jordan J Baechle⁷, Mathias Basner⁸, Susan M Bailey⁹, Luca Bielski⁶, Josef Borg^{10

11}, Joseph Borg^{10

11}, Jared T Broddrick¹², Marissa Burke^{6

13}, Andrés Caicedo^{14

15

16

17}, Verónica Castañeda^{18

19

20}, Subhamoy Chatterjee²¹, Christopher R Chin⁶, George Church²², Sylvain V Costes¹², Iwijn De Vlaminck⁶, Rajeev I Desai²³, Raja Dhir^{24

25}, Juan Esteban Diaz²⁶, Sofia M Etlin²⁷, Zachary Feinstein⁶, David Furman^{28

29

30}, J Sebastian Garcia-Medina⁶, Francine Garrett-Bakelman⁶, Stefania Giacomello³¹, Anjali Gupta³², Amira Hassanin³³, Nadia Houerbi⁶, Iris Irby³⁴, Emilia Javorsky^{35

36}, Peter Jirak^{37

38}, Christopher W Jones⁸, Khaled Y Kamal^{39

40}, Brian D Kangas⁴¹, Fathi Karouia^{42

43

44

45}, JangKeun Kim⁶, Joo Hyun Kim³⁹, Ashley S Kleinman⁶, Try Lam⁴⁶, John M Lawler³⁹, Jessica A Lee¹², Charles L Limoli⁴⁷, Alexander Lucaci⁶, Matthew MacKay⁶, J Tyson McDonald⁴⁸, Ari M Melnick⁶, Cem Meydan⁶, Jakub Mieczkowski⁴⁹, Masafumi Muratani⁵⁰, Deena Najjar⁶, Mariam A Othman³⁹, Eliah G Overbey^{6

51

52}, Vera Paar⁵³, Jiwoon Park⁶, Amber M Paul^{4

13}, Adrian Perdyan^{49

54}, Jacqueline Proszynski⁶, Robert J Reynolds^{55

56}, April E Ronca^{12

57}, Kate Rubins⁵⁸, Krista A Ryon⁶, Lauren M Sanders⁴, Patricia Savi Glowe⁵⁹, Yash Shevde⁶⁰, Michael A Schmidt⁶¹, Ryan T Scott⁶², Bader Shirah⁶³, Karolina Sienkiewicz⁶, Maria A Sierra⁶, Keith Siew⁶⁴, Corey A Theriot⁵⁵, Braden T Tierney⁶, Kasthuri Venkateswaran⁴⁶, Jeremy Wain Hirschberg⁶, Stephen B Walsh⁶⁴, Claire Walter⁶, Daniel A Winer^{28

65

66

67

68}, Min Yu^{69

70}, Luis Zea^{71

72}, Jaime Mateus⁷³, Afshin Beheshti^{74

75}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine Program, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
² The WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
³ Metavisionairies, Oxford, UK.
⁴ Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
⁵ Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
⁶ Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine Program, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
⁷ Buck Artificial Intelligence Platform, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, USA.
⁸ Unit for Experimental Psychiatry, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁹ Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
¹⁰ Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.
¹¹ Department of Applied Biomedical Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.
¹² Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
¹³ Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Department of Human Factors and Behavioral Neurobiology, Daytona Beach, FL, USA.
¹⁴ Instituto de Investigaciones en Biomedicina iBioMed, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁵ Escuela de Medicina, Colegio de Ciencias de la Salud COCSA, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁶ Sistemas Médicos SIME, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁷ Mito-Act Research Consortium, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁸ Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile.
¹⁹ IMPACT, Center of Interventional Medicine for Precision and Advanced Cellular Therapy, Santiago, Chile.
²⁰ Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics Lab, Program in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Center for Biomedical Research and Innovation (CIIB), Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile.
²¹ Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, USA.
²² Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
²³ Integrative Neurochemistry Laboratory, Behavioral Biology Program, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, USA.
²⁴ Seed Health, Venice, CA, USA.
²⁵ Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF), University of Zurich, Davos, Switzerland.
²⁶ Data Science Institute, School of Business, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
²⁷ Department of Astrobiology, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA.
²⁸ Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, USA.
²⁹ Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.
³⁰ Institute for Research in Translational Medicine, Universidad Austral, CONICET, Pilar, Argentina.
³¹ Science for Life Laboratory, Department of Gene Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
³² ANYg Labs, San Diego, CA, USA.
³³ Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt.
³⁴ School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
³⁵ Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
³⁶ Future of Life Institute, Campbell, CA, USA.
³⁷ Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
³⁸ Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital Gmünd, Lower Austria, Austria.
³⁹ Redox Biology and Cell Signaling Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
⁴⁰ Department of Kinesiology, Iowa State University, Ames, USA.
⁴¹ Behavioral Biology Program, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, USA.
⁴² Blue Marble Institute of Science, Exobiology Branch NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
⁴³ Space Research Within Reach, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁴⁴ Center for Space Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
⁴⁵ BioServe Space Technologies, Smead Aerospace Engineering Science Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁴⁶ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁴⁸ Department of Radiation Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C., USA.
⁴⁹ International Research Agenda 3P-Medicine Laboratory, Medical University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland.
⁵⁰ Department of Genome Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
⁵¹ The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
⁵² BioAstra, New York, NY, USA.
⁵³ Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Cardiology, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
⁵⁴ Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵⁵ University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
⁵⁶ KBR, Inc., Houston, TX, USA.
⁵⁷ Wake Forest Medical School, Dept of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
⁵⁸ NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA.
⁵⁹ BioAstra, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶⁰ Ursa Biotechnology Corporation, Ursa Bio, New York, NY, USA.
⁶¹ Sovaris Aerospace, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁶² KBR, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
⁶³ Department of Neuroscience, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
⁶⁴ London Tubular Centre, Department of Renal Medicine, University College London, London, UK.
⁶⁵ Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶⁶ Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶⁷ Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI), University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶⁸ Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶⁹ Department of Pharmacology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁷⁰ Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁷¹ Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁷² Jaguar Space, LLC, Erie, CO, USA.
⁷³ Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), Hawthorne, CA, USA.
⁷⁴ Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA. abehesht@broadinstitute.org.
⁷⁵ Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. abehesht@broadinstitute.org.

PMID: 38862027
PMCID: PMC12366838
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07586-8

Review

A second space age spanning omics, platforms and medicine across orbits

Christopher E Mason et al. Nature. 2024 Aug.

. 2024 Aug;632(8027):995-1008.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07586-8. Epub 2024 Jun 11.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine Program, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
² The WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
³ Metavisionairies, Oxford, UK.
⁴ Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
⁵ Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
⁶ Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine Program, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
⁷ Buck Artificial Intelligence Platform, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, USA.
⁸ Unit for Experimental Psychiatry, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁹ Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
¹⁰ Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.
¹¹ Department of Applied Biomedical Science, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.
¹² Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
¹³ Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Department of Human Factors and Behavioral Neurobiology, Daytona Beach, FL, USA.
¹⁴ Instituto de Investigaciones en Biomedicina iBioMed, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁵ Escuela de Medicina, Colegio de Ciencias de la Salud COCSA, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁶ Sistemas Médicos SIME, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁷ Mito-Act Research Consortium, Quito, Ecuador.
¹⁸ Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile.
¹⁹ IMPACT, Center of Interventional Medicine for Precision and Advanced Cellular Therapy, Santiago, Chile.
²⁰ Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics Lab, Program in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Center for Biomedical Research and Innovation (CIIB), Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile.
²¹ Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, USA.
²² Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
²³ Integrative Neurochemistry Laboratory, Behavioral Biology Program, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, USA.
²⁴ Seed Health, Venice, CA, USA.
²⁵ Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF), University of Zurich, Davos, Switzerland.
²⁶ Data Science Institute, School of Business, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, Quito, Ecuador.
²⁷ Department of Astrobiology, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA.
²⁸ Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, USA.
²⁹ Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA.
³⁰ Institute for Research in Translational Medicine, Universidad Austral, CONICET, Pilar, Argentina.
³¹ Science for Life Laboratory, Department of Gene Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
³² ANYg Labs, San Diego, CA, USA.
³³ Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt.
³⁴ School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
³⁵ Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
³⁶ Future of Life Institute, Campbell, CA, USA.
³⁷ Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
³⁸ Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital Gmünd, Lower Austria, Austria.
³⁹ Redox Biology and Cell Signaling Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
⁴⁰ Department of Kinesiology, Iowa State University, Ames, USA.
⁴¹ Behavioral Biology Program, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, USA.
⁴² Blue Marble Institute of Science, Exobiology Branch NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
⁴³ Space Research Within Reach, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁴⁴ Center for Space Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
⁴⁵ BioServe Space Technologies, Smead Aerospace Engineering Science Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁴⁶ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁴⁷ Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁴⁸ Department of Radiation Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C., USA.
⁴⁹ International Research Agenda 3P-Medicine Laboratory, Medical University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland.
⁵⁰ Department of Genome Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
⁵¹ The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
⁵² BioAstra, New York, NY, USA.
⁵³ Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Cardiology, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
⁵⁴ Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵⁵ University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
⁵⁶ KBR, Inc., Houston, TX, USA.
⁵⁷ Wake Forest Medical School, Dept of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
⁵⁸ NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA.
⁵⁹ BioAstra, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶⁰ Ursa Biotechnology Corporation, Ursa Bio, New York, NY, USA.
⁶¹ Sovaris Aerospace, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁶² KBR, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
⁶³ Department of Neuroscience, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
⁶⁴ London Tubular Centre, Department of Renal Medicine, University College London, London, UK.
⁶⁵ Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶⁶ Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶⁷ Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI), University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶⁸ Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶⁹ Department of Pharmacology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁷⁰ Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁷¹ Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁷² Jaguar Space, LLC, Erie, CO, USA.
⁷³ Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), Hawthorne, CA, USA.
⁷⁴ Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA. abehesht@broadinstitute.org.
⁷⁵ Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. abehesht@broadinstitute.org.

PMID: 38862027
PMCID: PMC12366838
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07586-8

Abstract

The recent acceleration of commercial, private and multi-national spaceflight has created an unprecedented level of activity in low Earth orbit, concomitant with the largest-ever number of crewed missions entering space and preparations for exploration-class (lasting longer than one year) missions. Such rapid advancement into space from many new companies, countries and space-related entities has enabled a 'second space age'. This era is also poised to leverage, for the first time, modern tools and methods of molecular biology and precision medicine, thus enabling precision aerospace medicine for the crews. The applications of these biomedical technologies and algorithms are diverse, and encompass multi-omic, single-cell and spatial biology tools to investigate human and microbial responses to spaceflight. Additionally, they extend to the development of new imaging techniques, real-time cognitive assessments, physiological monitoring and personalized risk profiles tailored for astronauts. Furthermore, these technologies enable advancements in pharmacogenomics, as well as the identification of novel spaceflight biomarkers and the development of corresponding countermeasures. In this Perspective, we highlight some of the recent biomedical research from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, European Space Agency and other space agencies, and detail the entrance of the commercial spaceflight sector (including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom and Sierra Space) into aerospace medicine and space biology, the first aerospace medicine biobank, and various upcoming missions that will utilize these tools to ensure a permanent human presence beyond low Earth orbit, venturing out to other planets and moons.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests

CEM is a co-Founder of Cosmica Biosciences. SMB is a co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member of KromaTiD, Inc.

Figures

**Figure 1.. A historic overview of space launches.**
**(inset)** The launches that defined the first space age, from 1957 to 2022, broken down by the country of origin. (**Main)** The exponential increase in launches marks the Second Space Age, driven more by commercial launches. The number of launches (y-axis) per year (x-axis) is plotted with the color annotated as the United States (blue), Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)/Russia (purple), China (red), and other countries (green).

**Figure 2.. Radiation levels of Inspiration4 mission, NASA’s Twins Study and other exposures.**
The effective accumulated radiation dose is provided in millisieverts (mSv). The low linear energy transfer (LET) radiation (or terrestrial radiation) is denoted by the green bars. The radiation levels experienced during the Inspiration4 mission and Scott Kelly year-long mission (NASA’s Twins Study) are indicated by orange bars. The estimated radiation dose of a 3-year future mission to Mars is depicted by a red bar. All other high LET radiation doses are indicated by the blue bars.

**Figure 3.. Long-duration missions enabled by heavy lift rockets.**
**(a)** The orbital trajectory and future missions enabled by the current Dragon capsule parameters. **(b)** Extra-lunar orbital trajectory that would approach the Lagrange point 1 (L1) closer to the sun and up to 1.54M km from the Earth (center blue diamond). The moon’s orbit is shown in dotted lines around the Earth. **(c)** The orbital trajectory for a three-planet mission in 2033 that would flyby Mars twice and also Venus (flyby) within about 18 months. The launch dates and approximate orbital timings (left) are shown around the planetary orbits (dotted line circles) and the flight path (yellow line). The sun is shown in the middle of the figure.

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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A second space age spanning omics, platforms and medicine across orbits

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A second space age spanning omics, platforms and medicine across orbits

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

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