Five institutions now offer residencies in aerospace medicine, with 10 active residents as of 2022. To keep up with the demand for people with expertise in aerospace medicine, academic medicine institutions have expanded their programs to prepare clinicians for this burgeoning industry. NASA has said that the ISS will cease operation in 2030 to be replaced by multiple space stations run by private industry that will be used for both tourism and scientific research. This commercial version of the “space race” comes alongside NASA’s announcement of its ambitious Artemis mission plans, which include sending a crew to the moon again for the first time since 1972, establishing a base camp on the moon, and, eventually, sending humans to Mars. Virgin Galactic sent its first commercial crew into orbit on June 29. Since then, several private companies have also accelerated their space travel programs, including Blue Origin, started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Virgin Galactic, launched by Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. In 2021, SpaceX, the spaceflight company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, made history by sending the first all-civilian crew into orbit. Over the last couple of years, private space travel has taken off, says Emmanuel Urquieta Ordonez, MD, an assistant professor at the Center for Space Medicine and chief medical officer at the Translational Research Institute for Space Health at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. And with them, so has the demand for physicians and medical researchers with expertise in aerospace medicine, a specialty focused on the distinct impact of aviation and space travel on the human body. While various missions to space, particularly to and from the International Space Station (ISS), have continued through the decades, it is only within the last few years that plans to expand space exploration have accelerated. … At a young age, I was very intrigued by space exploration.” “Everyone was riveted to watch the launches, the lunar landings, the splashdowns. His elementary school teachers “would literally stop a class and wheel in a black and white television,” Dervay recalls. To Joe Dervay, MD, it’s almost unfathomable that humans haven’t set foot on the moon in more than 50 years.ĭervay, a flight surgeon for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and president of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA), remembers growing up watching the Apollo lunar missions with awe and admiration. Posing in blue flight suits are NASA flight surgeons Joe Dervay, MD, right, and Steve Hart, MD, left. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley pose for a photo at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida prior to the NASA/SpaceX launch of the first Commercial Crew mission May 30, 2020.
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