Does being in space cause health problems?

These hazards do not stand alone. They can feed off one another and exacerbate effects on the human body, which are being studied using ground-based analogs, laboratories, and the International Space Station. The resulting data, technology, and methods serve as a knowledge bank from which scientists can extrapolate to multi-year interplanetary missions. Space Radiation is considered one of the most hazardous aspects of spaceflight. Isolation and Confinement can cause behavioral responses among groups of people far from Earth who are isolated and confined in a small space over a long period of time. Astronauts' entire bodies – muscles, bones, inner ear, and organs – must adjust to the new gravities encountered on the space station or their spacecraft, as well as on the Moon, Mars, and Earth once they return home. Maintaining a safe ecosystem inside a spacecraft presents unique challenges, from ensuring optimal temperatures, pressures, and lighting, to reducing noise, monitoring microbial communities, and tracking immune responses. Crews must be carefully chosen, trained, and supported to ensure they can work effectively as a team for months or years in space. On Mars, astronauts would need to live and work in three-eighths of Earth’s gravitational pull for up to two years. Throughout this time, their bodies – muscles, bones, inner ear, and organs – will be adjusting to new gravitational loads.

Many people experience "space sickness" On the ISS, or spacecraft that have flown into space, the force of gravity is much weaker than on the earth. As a result, many people show symptoms of "space sickness," such as headaches, nausea, and vomiting. If you stay for a few days in space, your brain adjusts its interpretation of the vestibular information, so the space sickness goes away. There are individual differences in the severity of space sickness, and some people don't experience it at all. When you return to earth, you experience the effects of earth's gravity again, and thus "gravity sickness" sometimes occurs, with similar symptoms as space sickness. If you stay for a while in space, the fluids in your body balance out, and facial swelling typically begins to disappear after a few weeks. Conversely, astronauts returning to earth often experience dizziness when standing up, known as orthostatic hypotension. If you stay for a long time in space, your muscles and bones will weaken, primarily in the legs and lower back. Muscles weaken and bone mass decreases if you stay for a long time in space. In outer space, with no atmosphere, radiation is more intense and has major impacts on the human body. If a person is exposed to a lot of higher energy radiation, the risk increases that they will develop diseases such as cancer. Astronauts develop stress before even realizing it when living and working together in a cramped space with other astronauts for a few months.