Long-duration spaceflight is challenging for the many body parts that help US maintain normal movements and perform well, which include our bones, joints, vision, and brain. Astronauts must perform to…

This federal contract award to Wake Forest University Health Sciences (WFUHS) is for the development and fabrication of a platform to better measure locomotor performance in rodent models under conditions simulating uneven and dangerous lunar/Martian terrain. The $147,146.15 grant is intended to assess how combined spaceflight hazards such as microgravity and radiation affect astronaut performance and identify potential countermeasures.

WFUHS is a leading academic medical center that frequently partners with government agencies on biomedical research, medical training, and clinical services. The university has extensive experience executing federal grants and contracts, including for the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health. This award is not set aside and is part of WFUHS's broader portfolio of federal contract and grant work supporting space exploration, specialized medical training, injury biomechanics research, and other areas.

Long-duration spaceflight is challenging for the many body parts that help US maintain normal movements and perform well, which include our bones, joints, vision, and brain. Astronauts must perform to the best of their abilities when they are traveling to a destination like the moon or mars, and when they reach the destination. During the travel to the destination, or on the surface of the planet/moon, astronauts could face dangerous situations that require rapid escape movements, or situations where the body could be in peril due to surroundings (like when climbing the rough terrain of a mountain or into a valley). If an astronaut is not performing well due to altered visual performance, but also has damaged bones due to low gravity or radiation, the astronaut could be at risk of catastrophic joint tears or bone breaks while exploring uneven/dangerous terrains, or during a required rapid escape into or out of a spacecraft. Our laboratory has measured that performance is altered in rodents after ~35 days in orbit on the international space station. However, these measurements were taken on a treadmill moving forward at a constant speed. This does not represent the dangerous terrain of the moon or mars, or other rapid movements astronauts would face during spaceflight. Thus our intent is to develop and fabricate a method to better reflect locomotor performance in rodent models over uneven and dangerous lunar/ martian surfaces in order to best assess how combined spaceflight hazards (e.g, microgravity and radiation) cause deficits in astronaut performance, measure time to recovery, and identify countermeasures. We will create a platform on which sits our treadmill that can measure mouse and RAT performance. However, the platform can move (one movable portion under each corner support of the treadmill) in a manner that can reflect uneven terrain or a rapid escape motion. Then we can measure how the animals that have previous been exposed to spaceflight conditions (like reduced gravity or radiation) respond. This platform and performance measurement device can then be used to test ways to maximize performance, and thus improve the technologies and approaches used during successful manned space exploration.