NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth

5 min read NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover walks on a treadmill while in a space suit harnessed to NASA’s Active Response Gravity Offload System at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Glover is simulating a walk on a planetary surface while in a suit that has been offloaded to lunar gravity. Artemis II astronauts completed this and other suited tasks before their mission launched and within a few days of landing, giving researchers a chance to assess how quickly upon landing crews’ bodies adapt to a different gravity. Results will help scientists better understand how soon after landing crews can complete mission-critical tasks on the surface of the Moon or Mars. NASA/Robert Markowitz Since NASA’s Artemis II crew members safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10 after their record-setting mission around the Moon, science teams have been busy collecting more data and combing through observations collected on the test flight. Results from these science investigations will help support safe human exploration of deep space and provide a blueprint for how future missions will conduct science on the lunar surface as NASA builds a Moon Base and develops an enduring human presence there. Postflight crew health, performance data In the hours, days, and weeks after landing, the Artemis II crew members, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, contributed critical data to help the agency understand how the human body reacts to spaceflight. Collecting this data as soon as possible after landing was important to understand how the body adapts from microgravity to Earth’s gravity. The data will inform NASA’s understanding of how quickly crews can complete mission-critical tasks after landing on a planetary surface like the Moon or Mars, where there won’t be landing support personnel to assist. Within a day of splashdown, researchers collected a suite of data for the Artemis II Spaceflight Standard Measures study, which is part of a larger effort across the astronaut corps to gather a baseline set of health measurements on blood pressure, heart rate, eye health, and motor control. Crew members also completed a mini obstacle course, which included lying down, standing up, unfurling a rope ladder, ladder climbing, and more, to assess how their bodies were adapting to Earth’s gravity. Once the crew returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, researchers guided them through further medical check-ups and tests of motor control . Over the next several days, the crew completed obstacle courses wearing spacesuits offloaded to lunar gravity, which is roughly one-sixth the force of Earth’s gravity. Researchers are now analyzing this data to gain insight into how crews may perform as they adapt to the gravity of a planetary surface. As part of the Immune Biomarkers study, researchers are comparing blood and saliva samples collected after the Artemis II splashdown with samples collected preflight and during the mission. Among other topics, the study investigates whether and how dormant viruses reawaken in astronauts’ bodies while in space. Some crew members completed postflight cognition tests and a simulated manual spacecraft docking task to assess motor control for the ARCHeR ( Artemis Research for Crew Health & Readiness ) study. This, combined with data collected through a wrist-worn device while crew members were in space, is used to understand the effect of space hazards on well-being and performance. Initial data collections for Artemis II health studies concluded 45 days after splashdown. However, medical teams will continually monitor astronaut health throughout the Artemis II crew members’ lifetimes. Once this data is processed and anonymized, information will be available for scientists to study the effects of spaceflight via a request to NASA’s Life Sciences Data Archive . The results from this work could lead to new technologies and studies that help predict the adaptability of crews on future missions to the Moon and Mars. Analyzing astronaut-derived organ chips flown around Moon A scientist handles AVATAR organ chips following their journey around the Moon aboard Orion. The chips contain cells from each astronaut and are being prepared for detailed analysis. NASA Organ chips from NASA’s AVATAR ( A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response ) investigation are being analyzed at chip developer Emulate’s laboratory in Boston. The organ chips included bone marrow cells from each Artemis II astronaut. They flew around the Moon with the astronauts, and now researchers are studying these organ chips to determine how deep space radiation and microgravity affect human health at the molecular level. Scientists are comparing the chips flown aboard the spacecraft to ground controls and