The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine will send a series of human health research experiments aboard the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission. This mission is the first in a series of human spaceflight missions from the Polaris Program. TRISH will join other institutions to send various experiments into high-altitude Earth orbit.
TRISH will use federal funding from its cooperative agreement with NASA to fund research addressing significant health risks associated with human spaceflight. The goal is to advance knowledge on the effects of space travel on human health and provide new protections and advances as NASA prepares for lunar missions.
“The Institute’s mission is to help humans thrive in deep space,” said Dr. Dorit Donoviel, TRISH executive director and associate professor for the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor. “We are grateful to our commercial space exploration partners, and in particular, the Polaris Program, who recognize how important it is to carry out and support health research in their missions, as a route to improving health for all humans in space and on Earth.”
The unique environment of spaceflight presents specific challenges to both body and mind. TRISH aims to understand these health risks better and develop countermeasures. Research supported by TRISH on Polaris Dawn includes studies from 10 universities and companies, building on previous work from the Inspiration4 mission in 2021.
The Polaris Program seeks to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities while raising funds and awareness for important causes on Earth. It proposes three human spaceflight missions aimed at demonstrating new technologies and conducting space health research. The first mission, Polaris Dawn, will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with four crewmembers spending up to five days in orbit.
Commercial spaceflights like Polaris Dawn increase access to medical and biological research opportunities previously limited to government-trained astronauts. TRISH maintains the EXPAND (Enhancing eXploration Platforms and Analog Definition) Program, a unique research platform that collects pre-, post-, and in-flight health data from multiple spaceflights into a centralized database. Data collected from these flights enhances understanding of how diverse individuals respond to space travel, helping ensure future travelers' health.
Additional details about TRISH research onboard Polaris Dawn can be found at bcm.edu/spacehealth.
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