Station Science Top News: Dec. 6, 2024

Astronaut cognitive performance remains generally stable

Researchers found that astronauts on six-month missions to the International Space Station demonstrated generally stable cognitive performance but mild changes in certain areas, including processing speed, working memory, attention, and willingness to take risks. This research provides baseline data that could help identify cognitive changes on future missions and support development of appropriate countermeasures.

Research to date has suggested mild decreases in some cognitive performance domains during spaceflight, likely influenced by spaceflight stressors such as radiation and sleep disruption. Longer missions represent greater exposure to these hazards and possible increases in individual vulnerabilities to them. Standard Measures collects a set of psychological and physiological measurements related to human spaceflight risks, including a cognition test battery, from astronauts before, during, and after missions. This paper includes the largest sample of professional astronauts published to date.

Scientific discoveries result from NSF/CASIS research

Researchers published highlights of discoveries resulting from a collaboration between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) in support of research on transport phenomena in space. A few examples include:

• combustion studies that advance our understanding of soot formation, wildfires, flame-spread in buildings, and other fundamental combustion phenomena important in everyday life on Earth
• heat transfer studies that provide insight into how the physics of evaporation and condensation affect cooling systems on spacecraft and in microelectronics and other industries on the ground
• fluid dynamics studies validating theories of how drops spread, relevant to the design of thermal management systems and for fluid processing on spacecraft, as well as in medical devices and other ground-based applications

Removing gravity enables research on fundamental physical phenomena that is difficult or impossible to conduct on Earth. The investigations that led to the findings above are Spherical Cool Flames, which observed the chemical reactions of cool diffusion flames for insight into combustion and fire behavior; Constrained Vapor Bubble, a study of how evaporation and condensation affect the efficiency of cooling devices; and Capillary Flow Experiment 2, research on wetting (a liquid’s ability to spread across a surface) to support design of better systems to process liquids.