the essential
This Wednesday evening, in Toulouse, the Friends of the Cité de l’Espace are offering a conference on the theme of space medicine. Audrey Berthier, director of the Toulouse Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES), looks back on the missions of this establishment.
What is meant by space medicine?
The main objective of space medicine is to maintain the health and performance of crews. Another objective: to use all these requirements and constraints to develop innovations for terrestrial health. Space medicine will be divided into several pillars: prevention of adverse effects related to adaptation to the space environment, weightlessness, isolation, confinement, and radiation risks. Medical research also allows us to draw a parallel with certain aspects of aging or disorders that can be observed in space. In weightlessness, we observe accelerated bone loss, its terrestrial parallel is osteoporosis for example. We are used to saying that space is a model of hypersedentary lifestyle or accelerated aging.
The objective is also to contribute to the medical autonomy of crews during their mission?
Our crews are potentially isolated patients.
They must be enabled to prevent and manage any medical problems that may arise during their mission and provided with technological tools to assist with diagnosis and care in this situation of isolation.
One component focuses on maintaining performance. Fatigue, stress, etc. are taken into account.
The last part is to guarantee a healthy environment for our crews, to ensure environmental control at the water and air level so that the crews remain healthy. We can make a terrestrial parallel with the circular economy at the scale of a habitat, and everything that is nutrition and environmental and microbial control. All these aspects are looked at to meet the needs of current and future missions and to support partners who are working on terrestrial applications for patients.
Can you give us some concrete examples of innovative applications?
We will use these extreme requirements to push certain technologies. We can cite the example of medical imaging: CNES supports developments in the field of ultrasound. There are also developments of tools using artificial intelligence that allow a non-specialist to carry out examinations. Very high-resolution bone imaging equipment has also been developed to assess bone quality before and after flight in astronauts. We are fortunate in Toulouse to have the CADMOS center which supports scientists by carrying out experiments on board the ISS.
A lot of your experiences are related to future missions to Mars?
Our goal is to prepare for missions to the Moon and Mars. Missions to Mars will take two to three years. Telemedicine will no longer be possible in real time. This changes the requirements and requires new developments. We are preparing these weightless science activities.
What are the major challenges facing MEDES in the years to come?
Explore to innovate in health: we support space exploration and contribute to innovations in health, while highlighting the French experience at the international level.
We want to prepare future observation missions while keeping in mind this constant objective of working on subjects that will have terrestrial applications. MEDES is an accelerator for certain technologies. Extreme requirements make it possible to optimize technological solutions, particularly in the field of health.
All practical information and registrations by clicking on this link.
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