SPACE tourism is expected to rapidly rise in the next few years and yet there are some “urgent” unanswered questions about how it affects fertility.
Last year saw a record 70 people launched in space – both orbital and suborbital – including singer Katy Perry, 41.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are among the billionaires vying for a slice of the fast-evolving space tourism opportunity.
And Musk even hopes humans will live in space eventually, setting up colonies on Mars.
Thanks to studies on the hundreds of astronauts who have been to the ISS and on other missions, we know quite a bit about what prolonged periods in space does to the body.
Your face gets puffy due to no gravity pulling your blood down, pressure that flattens the back of your eye balls, as well as loss of bone density and muscle if you don’t exercise at least two hours a day.
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And radiation levels are much higher than back here on Earth too.
According to Nasa, no human has ever had sex in space but scientists know from other studies that issues like a low sex drive and erectile dysfunction could plague astronauts.
The weightlessness of space is said to cause hormonal changes that could decrease a person’s sex drive.
There’s also the issue of gravity not being there to stop your partner from being pushed away from you.
But beyond the mechanics of reproducing in space, what do these huge changes on the body mean for pregnancy if we eventually stay for longer periods?
We actually know very little and scientists say it’s an urgent matter that needs to be addressed with increasing space tourism ever closer.
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Clinical embryologist Giles Palmer has warned guidelines are needed before “things get out of hand”.
He is one of several scientists who have sounded the alarm in a research paper for the Reproductive BioMedicine Online journal.
They say that space is a “hostile environment” for human biology to thrive.
Studies in animal models have shown that short-term radiation exposure adversely disrupts female menstrual cycles and increases the risk of cancers.
But their review found limited reliable data from male or female astronauts following longer missions in space.
Female astronauts who were blasted aboard Space Shuttle missions generally went on to have normal pregnancies later down the line – but these were short missions that lasted days, not months.
“As human activity shifts from short missions to sustained presence beyond earth, reproduction moves from abstract possibility to practical concern,” Palmer said.
The report writers argue action is needed now.
“As human presence in space expands, reproductive health can no longer remain a policy blind spot,” added Dr Fathi Karouia, a senior author of the study and a research scientist at Nasa.
“International collaboration is urgently needed to close critical knowledge gaps and establish ethical guidelines that protect both professional and private astronauts – and ultimately safeguard humanity as we move toward a sustained presence beyond Earth.”
