History books are rife with examples of how nutrition either made, or broke, exploration missions on Earth. As we write the future of space exploration, nutrition will be even more critical in ensuring crew health and safety and ultimately mission success. NASA’s Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory supports both operational and research protocols to help ensure astronaut health before, during, and after flight. Ground-analog research includes head-down tilt bed rest studies, studies of crews wintering over in Antarctica, and an ongoing year-long Mars surface simulation study: the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission. The Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory’s flight research has yielded findings on effects of spaceflight on vitamins, minerals, and hormones.

They have documented dietary effects on bone health, and effects of oral contraceptive use on venous thromboembolism (i.e., blood clot) risk. A key line of research has documented that ocular changes affecting some astronauts is genetically predisposed, and more specifically, genetic differences which affect B vitamin requirements appears to increase the risk of these ocular changes. An experiment being conducted on the ISS right now is testing a B vitamin countermeasure. As humans move beyond low-Earth orbit nutrition will be even more important for the maintenance of crew health and ultimately for mission success. Uniting the many disciplines which comprise the human system with the engineering of spacecraft will be a significant challenge, but daring to leave the planet demands this collaboration.