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and welcome to mission control houston

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and again joining us is a special guest

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uh mike barrett a veteran astronaut of

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the international space station and uh

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dr daboot welcome mike

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thanks so much kelly great to be here

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great to have you here now the reason we

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had you ended this week is because very

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early in the week the crew on board the

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space station was working on some vision

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experiments on orbit

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i know you know a lot about these you've

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been involved in experiments themselves

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can you tell us a little bit background

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about why it's important and

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what we're doing about it well sure

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kelly i have a lot of vested interest in

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this on many levels first of all being a

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medical doctor and a space medicine

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specialist but second of all having

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experienced this vision issue myself in

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2009 during a long duration flight on

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station i noticed my visual acuity was

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getting a little different it was

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shifting towards the distant vision

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and myself and bob this another

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physician

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we had decided to do eye exams on each

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other and we found a little bit of optic

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disc swelling

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and with that we actually talked to our

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specialists on the ground and they were

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able to fast track some hardware up

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there which allowed us to get very

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detailed camera hinges of images of the

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back of the eye

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and lo and behold uh since then we've

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discovered this constellation of

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findings if you will uh that include a

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lot of things with very very serious uh

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anatomy to us and so that includes uh

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swelling of the optic disc and

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distension of the the sheath that goes

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around the optic nerve and of course the

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vision changes which are just

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shifting a little bit towards the far

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side and a few other changes of of the

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retina itself and and possibly an

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increase in the pressure inside the head

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the

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central pressure as we call it

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intracranial pressure

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so the interesting thing here is that

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this has probably been going on for a

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very long time and because of iss and

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the tools that we've had available up

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there and of course because of our

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accumulated flight experience we've been

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able to characterize this now in ways

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that we couldn't before it was right

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under our noses but but now we're

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getting i think a very good

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understanding of it

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the other aspect of this is that it's uh

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it's very very highly prevalent meaning

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if you look at

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many different flyers

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and one of our series actually looked at

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26 out of 27 both space shuttle and

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space station flyers uh we we found some

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of these findings in 26 out of 27 so

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it's very high prevalence rate and what

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that tells you

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is that this is an aspect of adaptation

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to zero gravity that almost everyone

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goes through which we just weren't aware

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of for all this time but in some people

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of course it it's expressed a little bit

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more seriously in in some of the vision

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changes

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so we are mounting a very aggressive

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effort to understand how this happens

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why it happens and over what time course

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it happens so the experiments we've been

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doing this week are are part of that

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effort now we have a kind of a dual

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approach to this we we do an operational

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monitoring profile where we're looking

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at everybody as just a good medical

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metric to see how people do

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so we look at onboard ultrasound to look

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at the eye shape change to look at the

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optic nerve we do visual acuity tests to

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see if there's any shift in people from

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the the near to the far side

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and we have a very special device called

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an optical coherence tomograph or

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optical coherence tomography which

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essentially takes the layers of the eye

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and shows you their structure in very my

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new detail it's it's a fantastic device

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and that's what the crew this week was

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working with and that's what the crew is

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doing and that's that's a new device on

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orbit for us but it helps us to

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characterize this this set of findings

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in a way that is very detailed and

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something that we need a big detail or a

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a well-equipped laboratory to perform

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and of course we do imagery of of the

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back of the eye as well well let me ask

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a really simple question does it hurt

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well no

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that's a good question

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no it's just uh you're you're staring at

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a bright light and you're staring at a

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target and there's a little bit of a

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laser scan and it's it's not not bad at

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all i guess i was really referring to

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the changes in your eye shape and and

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these things that you're looking for do

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the symptoms are there painful symptoms

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you get headaches or anything like that

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that are associated with that i know

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when i have eye problems sometimes i'll

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have a headache so that's a great

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question and i think it's a truism that

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one of the reasons we've missed this so

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long is that it really doesn't have a

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lot of symptoms and one of the

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fascinating aspects of it is if you look

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at a ground population where people have

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increased intracranial pressure to the

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point where you see these anatomical

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changes they're they are sick they do

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hurt they have headaches nausea vomiting

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they can't walk straight there's all

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sorts of things that cause them to come

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to the doctor

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the only symptom we have is a

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far-sighted shift in some people

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otherwise we're fully correctable and

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we're fully functional afterwards during

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flight and after flight

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there's many reasons to have headaches

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in space and so we we do think about

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that quite a bit but they don't seem to

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be coupled necessarily to this set of

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findings and i think it's fair to use

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the word syndrome because it is a

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constellation of findings which we see

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consistently so really the only symptom

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is division shift okay and i guess this

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would be really important for future

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exploration missions because if you get

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farther and farther away from the earth

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you don't have any way to to get new

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lenses

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you're going to run into problems doing

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your job if you can't see well well

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absolutely and and this is one of the

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new problems that we've just discovered

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but it's it's critically important that

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we understand the mechanism and how to

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mitigate it or how to treat it and that

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is absolutely something that we need to

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have in place before we go exploring so

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with the the space station what we're

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hoping to find is the time course does

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this plateau over time and not get worse

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or does it progressively get worse with

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time and zero gravity uh those are

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things that we absolutely need to know

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coming out of the station program okay i

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know when you came in today and you saw

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everybody on the screen you were pretty

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jealous uh at uh what they were doing up

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on orbit uh the last time we had this

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many people on the station without a

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shuttle president was in october 2009 i

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think you were on board then what's it

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like being in such a crowd upstairs yeah

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absolutely that was a very special time

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for a lot of reasons but uh october 2009

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i had been up there for six months

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already and was getting ready to come

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home

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and uh we did the first uh mixed hand or

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a direct handover where we had three

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soyuz worth of crew members up there so

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nine crew members on station uh the

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interesting thing is we've had visiting

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shuttle crews where we could swell the

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population to 12 or 13.

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but you have the added volume of the

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space shuttle which is quite large

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and everybody sort of has their own

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quarters uh there on the shuttle whereas

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uh with the soyuz

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you have a bunch of folks you got three

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deposed individuals without crew

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quarters and a lot of activity

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concentrated into the russian segment so

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it actually seemed quite a bit more

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crowded and busy when we had nine than

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when we had 12 or 13.

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but it's a it's a good time because a

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lot of dynamic flight activities are

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happening and these are the things that

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make space flight exciting make

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astronauts happy so during this time

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period that will include packing to go

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readying the new soyuz to return

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spacewalk

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all the experiments are coming to a head

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and of course people are winding down a

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six-month shift up there so it's a it's

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a wonderful time but it is quite busy

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all right well mike barrett astronaut

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physician

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veteran of the international space