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Asked by anon-182625 on 25 Jun 2018.
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Claire Donald answered on 25 Jun 2018:
Actually its the opposite. Astronauts get a bit taller in space because there is no gravity compressing the disks in their back causing the spin to become longer. This gets back to normal after returning to Earth.
NASA have done a pretty interesting study using identical twins- one who lived on the International Space Station for 340 days and one that stayed home on Earth. This provides the perfect experiment to compare what happens to a body in space with an exact copy that stayed behind. They looked at the impact that living in space had on lots different factors like behaviour, heart health, gene expression and on the bacteria in their gut. If you’re interested you can read about it here: https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study
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Liza Selley answered on 28 Jun 2018:
Muscle can shrink in space! Specifically this happens to muscles in the legs, back and neck which we usually use to work against gravity. As there is no gravity in space, the astronauts stop using these muscles and they weaken like they would if a body builder stopped weight training. astronauts have to do lots of exercise in space to prevent this from happening too severely – otherwise they might be in danger if there is an emergency during their re-entry to Earth. Once home, a bit of effort in the gym is all that’s needed to build the muscle up again.
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Lauren Burns answered on 29 Jun 2018:
Your head actually looks even rounder than usual in space because the fluids in your body are no longer being pulled down and just kinda float about and settle wherever. Space and the micro-gravity that exist out there does some really weird things to the body – which is why that space-twin study is so interesting!
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