In 2016, astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth
after nearly a year on the International Space Station.
But when he came back, he was 2 inches taller.
So, what exactly happened up there,
and what does that mean for the future of space travel?
If you're planning a trip to the International
Space Station, be prepared to feel weightless.
The station orbits the planet every 90 minutes,
moving at more than 17,000 miles per hour.
That's 30 times faster than a commercial jet aircraft.
As a result, astronauts on board live in a constant state
of free fall, or weightlessness.
Garrett Reisman: Being up there in microgravity is awesome.
It's, like, the coolest thing,
because it's like you have the power to fly.
Narrator: That's Garrett Reisman,
a former NASA astronaut who's logged 107 days in space.
There are a few immediate side effects, he says,
when you first experience microgravity.
Reisman: So the first thing you really feel is
you feel kinda sick.
You don't feel very good those first couple days.
It's kinda like being airsick or seasick.
We call it space-adaptation sickness.
Your vestibular system, your organs
that provide information to the brain
about your rotation and your acceleration,
they're not working that great without being in gravity.
Narrator: Without gravity working on your body,
your bones and muscles start to break down, too.
In fact, bone density drops by over 1% per month.
By comparison, the rate of bone loss
for elderly men and women is around 1% to 1.5% per year.
And, because it doesn't take much effort
to float through space,
your muscles lose strength and endurance pretty quickly.
Reisman: You have to work out every day.
So, they scheduled two hours a day pretty much every day
while I was on the space station for working out.
What we found was, if you do enough resistive exercise,
you can halt the effects of the bone loss
and the muscle atrophy.
Narrator: Without gravity pulling them down,
fluids pool in the body, tricking it into thinking
it's carrying too much water.
As a result, astronauts have to pee...
a lot.
This makes it easy for them to get dehydrated
and develop kidney stones.
Reisman: So, you have a shift in your fluid.
A lot of the blood volume that normally is down in your legs
ends up up here, and your chest kinda puffs up
and your face puffs up, and you can see it.
If you look at pictures of us on the space station,
it looks like we put on some weight or something
and we're all puffed up.
Narrator: Swelling in the upper body
puts pressure on the eyes as well,
which can cause vision problems.
Reisman: A lot of us, including myself,
had a shift in our vision while we're up in space.
You start out, everything was fine,
and all of a sudden things get blurry.
We could see the effects of it.
We could see swelling in the optic nerve,
we could see folds in the cornea,
but we're still not 100% sure
exactly what's causing it and how to stop it.
Narrator: With all the challenges of space travel,
one benefit is you actually get taller.
Reisman: So, yes, you do get taller when you go to space.
It's the whole reason I signed up for this job.
Your spine is being compressed by gravity.
So, when you go into the microgravity environment
and you no longer have any kind of compressive loads
on the spine at all, it stretches.
I grew about an inch.
Astronaut: Woo-hoo!
Narrator: Without gravity working against it,
the heart doesn't have to work as hard
to pump blood throughout the body.
Over time, this could lead to the heart
actually decreasing in size.
Reisman: There is an effect on the cardiovascular system
about being up in space.
So you do get a reduced aerobic capability.
You can be in great shape,
and after being up in space for a couple days,
you might get on the treadmill, and you might be like,
"Man, I must not have been hitting the gym."
Narrator: The immune system also takes a hit.
Researchers discovered that a lack of gravity
weakens the functions of T cells,
which play a crucial role in fighting off diseases.
Another concern is cosmic radiation.
Astronauts on the station are exposed
to over 10 times the amount of radiation
that we get on Earth.
Reisman: At a couple hundred miles,
we're well above the atmosphere,
but we're still well below the magnetic field of the Earth.
But we still get a large bit of protection
from that magnetic field.
In fact, you could tell, because when you close your eyes,
you see little lightning bolts,
and that's actually a result of some of the radiation
hitting your eyeballs and releasing photons.
Narrator: Artificial shielding on the ISS
only partially protects astronauts from harsh radiation,
leaving them more susceptible to cancer
and other diseases later in life.
Finally, astronauts must also be able to handle
the psychological challenges of confinement and isolation.
Reisman: So, there is a psychological aspect
to being in space, both because of the fact
that you're isolated from the rest of humanity,
it was really strange to be looking out the window
at billions of people down there
that had no way to get to me.
When I was there, I only had two crewmates
at a time on the space station,
so if you don't get along with somebody,
that could be bad, because you don't have
too many choices there in making new friends.
Narrator: And, without a 24-hour sleep cycle,
astronaut circadian rhythm is thrown off,
which can cause more stress and lead to sleep disorders.
Reisman: You're taking jet lag to a whole nother extreme.
Well, the weird thing is that you go around the planet
once every hour and a half.
So every 45 minutes, the sun is either rising or setting.
So you can't, like, tell what time it is
by looking out the window.
Narrator: So, what does all this mean
for the future of space travel?
Well, a trip to Mars would expose astronauts
to even more dangers than those
on the International Space Station.
They would face higher levels of radiation,
shifting gravity fields, and longer travel times,
which would compound all of the negative effects
of space on the human body and mind.
Reisman: I think the biggest issue we gotta deal with
is the radiation.
We don't know precisely what that exact radiation
does to human beings.
But what does gamma rays or what does heavy ions,
what do they do human tissue?
We don't really know.
Narrator: Right now, NASA and other research organizations
are working to develop better technology
that protects astronauts against these hazards,
so maybe one day humans might make it to Mars.