Vlog 13: What if we get sick in space?

Uploaded on November 25, 2024

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Vlog 13: What if we get sick in space?

Have you ever wondered what happens if an astronaut gets sick in space? If they badly cut themselves? If they get a tooth ache? CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen talks about the training astronauts receive to deal with medical emergencies, bumps and bruises in space. 

As we travel further into space, medical risk will increase. Canada is exploring technologies to enable astronauts to take care of themselves with less support from the ground. These could also have applications in remote communities. (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA, Fulwell 73 UK Limited)

Jeremy Hansen: We'll be really far from home, and you can't just turn around and come back to a hospital, even in a day.

Let's talk about health with respect to deep-space exploration. So for our Artemis II mission, the first aspect for us is preventative care.

Astronauts will be in quarantine for two weeks before we launch. We have a lot of screening before we fly to make sure we're healthy. And we've taken care of everything that can be taken care of on the ground before we go.

But then we need to think about what happens if we do have an issue during our mission. We'll be really far from home, and you can't just turn around and come back to a hospital, even in a day. We might have days that we have to remain in space with an emergency.

And so our entire crew has been doing some medical training. We'll continue to do more. We've even spent time in real hospitals, emergency rooms, operating rooms, just to get some comfort and understanding – some of the things that we might be asked to do to help one another under the guidance and surveillance of expertise and Mission Control.

TEXT IN SCREEN
Orion’s medical kit contains medications and material to treat:
-    space motion sickness
-    congestion
-    headaches
-    back achesbackaches 
-    allergic reactions
-    infections
-    lacerations (sutures, bandages, etc.)

We even do some dental training. So if anyone's ever had a dental emergency, it can be very painful, very distracting. 

So we go over some techniques to, let's say we broke a tooth, how we could sort of patch that up temporarily for a few days until we could get to see a dentist back on planet Earth. 

TEXT ON SCREEN
Including the dental equipment, Orion’s medical kit will be about 14 kg.

Its capability is significantly lower than the one on the International Space Station due to volume/mass constraints, but also because of the mission’s short duration.

If we want to stay for long duration on the Moon, or eventually we want to go to Mars, we do need to leverage technology today to figure out how we can enable astronauts to take care of more aggressive issues in space.

The Canadian Space Agency identified the existing genius in Canada who are already working in remote medicine and focusing the technologies and the operational needs of space to bring some really innovative and creative solutions both to the planet here, and eventually, one day, out into the solar system.

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