When a scheduled eight-day mission for NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore turned into what now looks like an eight-month stay on the International Space Station—they’re now due back in February 2025—it reinforced potential dangers of space exploration. The duo was left temporarily stranded on the ISS due to safety concerns regarding the Boeing Starliner that brought them there, and the Starliner was returned to Earth without them aboard.

And with a NASA crewed moon mission on the near horizon—and a possible trip to Mars on tap in the 2030s— understanding how long-term space flight affects the human body has become more urgent.

Afshin Beheshti (B.S. ’97) is one of a team of researchers who released 44 scientific papers in June, all devoted to studying what extended periods in space do to our metabolism. Beheshti is the director of the space bio-medicine program and associate director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He also worked at NASA for seven years.

The group of papers published in the journal Nature Portfolio are titled “Space Omics and Medical Atlas” (SOMA). The word “omics” is an umbrella term for biology fields ending in “-omics” (like genomics and phenomics) that aim to understand organisms beginning at the molecular level. The data for SOMA came from monitoring astronauts who took part in the three-day Inspiration 4 mission—the first all-civilian mission to orbit—in September 2021.

Valery Polyakov still holds the record for the longest continuous journey into space, spending 438 days on the Mir space station in 1994-1995. But it’s not only the duration of space travel that affects the body, it’s altitude.

“There are five key hazards to space travel, but two are really vital,” says Beheshti. “Microgravity is of course a huge one, because our bodies are used to gravity; space radiation is the other.”

On Earth, human bodies are shielded from much of the sun’s radiation by the atmosphere and magnetic field surrounding the planet. The higher a person travels from the Earth’s surface, the more radiation they encounter. Space radiation comes in several varieties, but the one researchers worry about most is galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), which come from exploding stars or supernovas and blast particles from elements across the periodic table at nearly the speed of light. This radiation can affect the body in complex ways, and the larger particles in these rays can be particularly damaging to DNA—potentially causing a variety of health hazards, including cancer.

The ISS orbits at an altitude of around 400 kilometers. The Inspiration 4 astronauts flew at 575 kilometers. At that higher altitude, says Beheshti, the astronauts were exposed in just a few days to radiation amounts equivalent to months on the ISS. The Polaris Dawn mission in September, the first to test Starlink laser-based communications in space, reached 1,408 kilometers—the highest orbit ever for a crewed spacecraft—and included a spacewalk. “That’s when you’re getting closer to what may be actually happening [when] you’re going to the moon, for example, or Mars,” says Beheshti.

The study showed that about 90 percent of tracked biological functions for the astronauts returned to normal within a relatively short period of time once they were back on Earth. It’s the remaining 10 percent that worries Beheshti. “That [trip] was just three days. What if you are going to Mars on a round trip? There are a lot of things that we need to dive into and sort out.”

Beheshti coauthored one of the SOMA studies that found a potential therapy for cardiovascular damage caused by space radiation. The paper at looked certain types of small RNA that circulate readily in the bloodstream. It showed alteration from space flight that could be linked to cardiovascular problems. The researchers found inhibitors that could bind to these small RNA molecules and block their harmful impact.

The technique may even may have broader therapeutic effects, says Beheshti. “Space radiation from GCRs can collapse blood vessels at the microvascular level. When we inhibited those three RNAs in our 3D human organ model, it medicated that kind of damage,” he explains. “The RNA also slowed repair in DNA broken by radiation, and we were able to show a speed up in that process with the blockers.”

Another study related to kidney function. Having organ failure on a two-plus-year crewed mission to Mars would present a major problem. “Our paper did not find that space travel can bring on kidney failure—some articles misinterpreted our results—but we did find you might have kidney stone formation due to low gravity and radiation. [I]t is something people should be aware of.”

While Beheshti studies the effects of space from the ground, he was preceded in flight by his father, a pilot for Iran Air. Beheshti’s parents brought their family to Minnesota from Iran in 1979 to escape the brewing revolution there, and Beheshti grew up in Apple Valley. His father was a commercial pilot and his mother, who’d worked in finance, stayed home to take care of Beheshti and his sister before returning to work. When it came time for college, the U of M was a natural choice. “It’s the only place I applied,” he says.

Beheshti studied high energy physics. “We got to work on these high energy colliders and worked with Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. NASA has a space radiation lab there, so I’ve been back at Brookhaven doing experiments. It’s kind of full circle.”

Beheshti is also a passionate advocate for open science. “These papers are a testament to open science, and you need a lot of people because there is tons of data.” He’s always looking for collaborators who have expertise in space science. “Someone at the U of M, for example, could be doing groundbreaking research that ... could lead to a discovery through collaboration,” he says. “Some of these papers put out in the SOMA package were led by graduate students who had an idea and became first authors. That’s great. Let’s do it.”

If you liked this story, Minnesota Alumni magazine publishes four times a year highlighting U of M alumni and University activities. Early access to stories and a print subscription are benefits of being an Alumni Association member. Join here to receive a printed copy at home.