Dr Katherine Bennell-Pegg

They're the three riskiest.

And there's still so much we're learning about the human body in space, right?

We just had the first medical evacuation ever from space, from the International Space Station, and we still don't know the exact cause.

The astronaut who it happened to recently went public about it and said there were minutes where he couldn't talk, and they haven't figured out why yet.

So there's a lot going on.

The way I rationalize it is by knowing that the teams that are working on it

are doing their they really believe in what they're doing they're very well trained and that we've taken into account all the lessons learned from the past that's been really um a critical way to have trust and move forward as astronauts you are very well informed of all the risks that are happening during a mission if something goes wrong as well as in advance but it's knowing that you go up there for a purpose not for prestige and truly believing in that purpose

So on the International Space Station, that soccer field-sized lab basically is infrastructure for science.

And a huge part of what you do is research into new medicines and pharmaceuticals in dishes.

You can grow cancer tumors in 3D.

You can grow Alzheimer's proteins.

You can't do that here on Earth.

As an astronaut, we are ourselves medical guinea pigs.

Like our bones would degrade at 2% mass a month.

if we don't do two hours a day in the gym up there.

And that means we can be test subjects for things like osteoporosis on Earth.

Same for muscle wasting, same for every system in the body.

And I think that's really important.

It's also an important way to uplift the aspiration in your country, yes, for technical fields, but also more broadly when people have astronauts from their nation as well.

Spot on.