Those studies involve groups of eight to 12 people who continuously lie in beds positioned at a minus 6 degree angle between 24 hours to three months. The angle mimics the effect of fluids flowing to the head and leaving an astronaut s extremities as they would in space, said Sara Arnaud, a NASA doctor at the Ames facility. Once we ask them to go to bed they are in space. They do not get up. The subjects eat and read in that position and use bedpans or urinals.
Horizontal showers are available.
Researchers have found that in such a state muscles atrophy and bones lose calcium. Astronaut and physician Ellen Baker told CNN Science Correspondent Ann Kellan she experienced several body changes aboard Russian space station Mir and on three space shuttle missions. There are other ongoing studies about changes in major organs when the body is buoyant . The research is valuable, Arnaud said, because it provides information that scientists can use to develop methods to counter the effects that weightlessness produces on the body. In 1996, her work for the Life and Microgravity Sciences Mission allowed scientists conducting experiments for that flight to unearth potential problems they might have in space and tweak their experiments involving muscle contractions before the launch, she said.