![]() After just two weeks muscle mass can fall by as much as 20% and on longer missions of three-to-six months it can fall by 30%. The most affected are those muscles that help to maintain our posture in our back, neck, calves and quadriceps – in microgravity they no longer have to work nearly as hard and begin to atrophy. Without the constant tug of gravity on our limbs, muscle and bone mass quickly begins to diminish in space. The spacecraft they will travel in will be far smaller than the ISS, meaning smaller lightweight exercise devices will be needed.īut problems keeping fit aside, just what does spaceflight do to the human body? A return journey to Mars, for example, is expected to take around 1,100 days (just over three years) under current plans. It is information that will prove vital as humans set their sights on sending crews on missions to explore deeper into the Solar System. He is the first astronaut to participate in a study examining how exercising with limited gym equipment can affect the human body. His extended trip in space, however, will provide valuable insights into how humans can cope with long-duration spaceflight and how best to counteract the problems it can present. Spending so much time in the low gravity environment of the ISS will have taken a toll on his body, so he had to be lifted out of the capsule by the recovery teams. With a huge grin on his face, Rubio was carried from the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft after it bumped safely back to Earth in a cloud of dust near the town of Zhezkazgan in the Kazakhstan Steppe. But it still means he is around two months short of the record for the longest ever spaceflight by a human – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spent 437 days onboard the Mir Space Station in the mid 1990s. ![]() The extra months in space allowed Rubio to clock up a total of 5,963 orbits around the Earth, travelling 157.4 million miles (253.3 million km). His time in orbit – which surpassed the previous US record of 355 consecutive days – was extended in March after the spacecraft he and his crewmates had been due to fly home in developed a coolant leak. His departure from the International Space Station (ISS) and return to Earth marks the end of the longest single spaceflight by an American to date. ![]() With a few handshakes, a brief photoshoot and a wave, Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio bid farewell to the American-football-field-sized collection of modules and solar panels that has been his home for the past 371 days.
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