On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space. His 2-hour voyage aboard the Vostok 3KA-2 definitively demonstrated that humans could survive in space. In the 55 years since Gagarin’s historic flight, hundreds of astronauts and cosmonauts have travelled into space, mankind has visited the moon and it is now realistic to believe that a manned mission to Mars will comm...

• Visual perturbation increased muscle activation while walking on incline treadmill. Steeper treadmill elicited more lower extremity activation. Females had pronounced responses to visual than males. Virtual reality could be a promising paradigm for astronauts' training.

Cytotoxic activity of non-major histocompatibility complex-restricted (CD56+) (NMHC) killer cells and cell surface marker expression of peripheral blood mononuclear cells were determined before and after spaceflight. Ten astronauts (9 men, 1 woman) from two space shuttle missions (9- and 10-day duration) participated in the study. Blood samples were collected 10 days before launch, within 3 h a...

Long-term interactions in groups can be monitored through games in which the participants need to show their social preferences by making choice to help or to use egoistic game strategy. In this paper we analyse the facial expressions of a group of isolated individuals (astronauts) during repeated interactions in subsequent encounters in a game. The astronauts were taking part in the Mars-500 i...

The spacesuit, particularly the spacesuit glove, creates a barrier between astronauts and their environment. Motivated by the vision of facilitating full-body immersion for effortless space exploration, it is necessary to understand the sensory needs of astronauts during extra-vehicular activities (EVAs). In this paper, we present the outcomes from a two-week field study performed at the Mars D...