They say that going to space changes you. The idea is that people get a new perspective from seeing our world from above. It’s called the Overview Effect1. But a new project offers clues to how spaceflight also changes our bodies. This Space Omics and Medical Atlas—or SOMA—has measured a broad range of effects.

人们说太空飞行会改变一个人。这是指从太空俯瞰我们的世界，会得到新的视角，这就是“总观效应”。但一个新的研究项目揭示，太空飞行也会改变我们的身体。该项目名为“空间组学和医学图谱”（SOMA），对广泛的影响做了估量。

Researchers have studied spaceflight’s effects on health since the dawn of the Space Age. They’ve looked into the effects of weightlessness， space radiation and other out-of-this-world conditions as people have rocketed into low-Earth orbit—and sometimes spent months there.

自太空时代伊始，研究人员就一直在研究太空飞行对健康的影响。随着人们进入近地轨道——有时会在那里待几个月，研究人员研究了失重、太空辐射等地外条件的影响。

Well-known problems include bone loss and an increased risk of cancer. But there have been signs of vision impairment2 and drops in certain types of brain tissue. It may weaken immunity and change the switches that turn on genes.

人们熟知的问题有骨质流失和患癌风险增加，但已有迹象表明，视力可能受损，某些类型的脑组织也可能有所减少。太空飞行或会削弱免疫力，改变启动基因表达的开关。

What’s not always been as clear is what might be changing at a molecular level. SOMA hoped to find out.

分子水平上可能出现的变化有时不那么清楚，而SOMA所希望的就是将其查清。

The project’s new data come from short stays， such as travel into orbit via Axiom missions （Ax-1 and -2） and SpaceX’s Inspiration4. Additional data came from some missions by NASA and the Japanese Space Agency.

该项目的新数据来自短期太空停留，例如通过公理太空公司的国际空间站任务（公理1号和公理2号）和美国太空探索技术公司的“灵感4”号飞船进入太空轨道。其他数据来自美国国家航空航天局（NASA）和日本航天局的一些飞行任务。

SOMA’s initial findings appear as a series of 30 papers. They came out in various Nature journals. And already， they make up the largest published database on aerospace medicine and space biology.

SOMA的初步调查结果以30篇系列论文的形式呈现，发表在《自然》旗下的若干期刊上，业已构成目前最大的航空航天医学和空间生物学数据库。

Professional astronauts working for government space agencies must undergo rigorous3 tests to screen for potential health problems. The same is not true for private space travelers. And that’s why SOMA’s data are so important. A major shift is underway in human spaceflight： the rise of commercial space tourism.

为政府航天机构工作的专业宇航员必须接受严格测试，以筛查潜在的健康问题，私人太空旅行者则不然。这就是SOMA的数据如此重要的原因。人类太空飞行正在发生重大转变：商业太空旅游兴起。

Space lengthens DNA ‘caps’

太空会延长DNA“帽”

Perhaps the most well-known long-term biomedical NASA study involved identical twins. Scott and Mark Kelly both trained as astronauts. Scott spent 340 days on the International Space Station. Afterward， researchers looked at how that affected his physiology， gene expression， immune system and mental reasoning. To better understand any changes， they compared these features to those in Mark， the twin who stayed on the ground.

NASA最著名的长期生物医学研究或许就是以同卵双胞胎为对象的那一项。