A Life Sciences Fortuitous Opportunity: NASA's Twins Study
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
While the goal of the yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) involving US astronaut Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who both returned to Earth on March 2, was intended to examine the effects of microgravity on the human body with the aim of reducing the health risks on future crewmembers, NASA serendipitously fell into a fortuitous situation to study spaceflight at the molecular level, potentially providing the life sciences sector a wealth of data – an opportunity that may not come around again for quite some time, if at all.