• Question: What have you discovered so far about the human heart in space?

    Asked by Griff117 to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 7 Dec 2015. This question was also asked by purplepanda.
    • Photo: Julia Attias

      Julia Attias answered on 7 Dec 2015:

      Hi @656nch28 & @383nch28,

      So I myself haven’t actually found anything out. There are many things that are known about the human heart in space, but that is mainly due to research that started many years ago and continues today. Unfortuantely it takes a very long time to understand anything in science, and my 3 years of research (which hasn’t only focused on the heart) hasn’t been long enough to learn anything that we don’t already know.

      The heart in space gets weaker because it no longer has to work hard to pump blood around the body. It doesn’t have gravity dragging blood down to the legs and then having to work really hard to push it back up to the brain. So our heart rate slows down and relaxes a little, and its size can sometimes get a little smaller – it is a muscle after all and if it isn’t working as hard, then it wont be as big a muscle as it was when it has to work harder!

    • Photo: Andrew Winnard

      Andrew Winnard answered on 9 Dec 2015:

      Like Julia said, the heart gets weaker, which means when you come back you get tired quicker when exercising! The astronauts do exercise 2hours everyday in space to try and prevent this! You can see the running machine on the space station here:

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