宇宙航空環境医学 Vol. 53, No. 4, 80, 2016

3.　Future of Space Medicine-Related Medical Operations and Researches

Katsuhiko Ogata

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Principal Medical Officer

Given travel between Earth and Mars and stay on Mars, there are four major items to solve in JAXA’s space medicine issues as follows.
　（a） Development of training device based on artificial gravity technology is needed to enable reconditioning from 1/3 G environment in situations on Mars with limited resources.　We just began a plan of Free Flyer which can be seperated and binded by Tether, and then two spaceships produce AG by its rotation.
　（b） It will be required each crew member to deal with a problem on one’s own first before the support from the earth can arrive and then the crew members to cover one another.　Therefore, it would be crucial for the exploration to enable to grasp the mental condition of each astronaut and to take necessary measures including rest and taking medicine by themselves or by on-site astronauts mutually.　JAXA has started the experiments under enclosed environment to establish effective stress marker indexes for understanding of such stress condition from last year.
　（c） The 3rd issue is how we protect the body from exposure to space radiation and it is important to develop shielding materials and extravehicular spacesuits to shield the radiation.　However, according to ICRP Recommendation, the absorbed radiation dose during 940 days flight assuming current Mars mission becomes 750 mSv, which means most astronauts cannnot achieve a Mars mission.　We have to reevaluate the standard on the condition of low dose exposure environment.
　（d） Finally, there are problems about food and immunity.　We are trying to bring on new Japanese food menus with a high regard for the power of Japanese food, which was designated as an Intangible cultural heritage, from the standpoint that “the intestinal bacterial flora rules the immune system”.