In general, research in life-sciences can be drastically accelerated at negligible costs on board the “flying laboratory” engineered and operated by the SpaceLand program to provide microgravity and low-gravity conditions to the science and technology community, in order to drastically accelerate research, analysis, design, development, testing and qualification of equipment, systems, methodologies and processes related to gravity-dependent chemical, physical as well as biological processes.
Similarly to what happens in the field of osteoporosis, muscular atrophy, proprioceptive and neuro-vestibular systems, cardiology and many other research areas, also neurobiology is a research area which can greatly benefit from research campaigns in varying gravity levels as well as in weightlessness: in particular, hormones production and correlated neuro-biological functions are strongly affected by the environment generated by such flight conditions, providing a great deal of experimental results with potentially major implications on the progress in neurobiology.
At the end of 2008, a new SpaceLand research flight campaign in low-gravity and weightlessness was carried out for researchers of the Italian National Health Institute “Istituto Superiore di Sanità” (ISS) together with the Italian National Research Center (CNR) and the European Brain Research Institute (EBRI) - Rita Levi Montalcini Foundation related to the on-going analysis to understand the neurobiological mechanisms which are believed to pay the way to the onset of neurological pathologies such as Alzheimer’s.
In particular, sampling before, during and after the flight campaign was carried out on a group of SpaceLand crewmembers including the world’s youngest life-science test subject (11 years old) flying in so-called Moon-g (1/6 g), Mars-g (1/3 g), Zero-g and hyper-gravity conditions (this latter at approximately 2 g) where g equals 9,81 m/s2 ): the objective was to statistically gather data on quality and quantity of hormones released by humans at different ages when subjected to mental and physical stresses before, during and after aerospace-flight-like situations.
The mission took on September 28th from the NASA Space Shuttle L.F. at Cape Canaveral, with scientists and test subjects selected among the public and extensively trained to qualify for the flight mission, by tests in ground simulators as well as underwater at the SpaceLand Basic Training camp on the Olympic Alps in Italy and then at the SpaceLand Advanced Training Camp in Belgium.
