A case of coronary artery disease (CAD) has not been registered during any human space flight as of May 2014. However, due to the lack of public funding for larger space shuttles following the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, NASA has had to rely on the smaller Soyuz shuttles to send crews to space, which increased the waiting time for manned spaceflights and increased the average age of space crews since the mid-1990s. Since the risk of cardiovascular disease increases as people age, research on these diseases has become more important for space agencies -