As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) progresses its ambitious Artemis spaceflight program, Australian researchers including the Kolling Institute\u2019s Academic Director Professor James Elliott will tap into their scientific expertise to offer support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Professor Elliott attended a recent event at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Centre in Texas, which brought together leading clinicians and scientists from around the world to discuss ways to reduce the spine injuries experienced by astronauts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This group is exposed to a range of musculoskeletal conditions including spinal pain and muscle challenges due to the lack of gravity when in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Professor Elliott said we know that physical changes to the spine during spaceflight predispose astronauts to symptomatic spine pain and nearly 50 per cent of cases presenting to NASA\u2019s musculoskeletal care team involve spine pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe risk of spine pain during and after spaceflight raises operational issues and concerns for the long-term spine health of astronauts and others going into space,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are looking forward to sharing our expertise to help reduce injury, and improve the health and performance of astronauts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNASA has expressed an interest in our MuscleMap program, which is a revolutionary technique to assess whole-body skeletal muscle composition using high-resolution MRI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe program is generating a reference dataset of muscle composition across the lifespan to help diagnose pathology, gauge the effectiveness of interventions, and develop new health outcome measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe normative data sets, developed by the MuscleMap program, could be used to compare data sets from the astronauts, so that when astronauts return from space, and they\u2019ve experienced zero gravity exposure, you will be able to see what\u2019s happened to their muscle system and what has changed to their skeletal muscle composition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe MuscleMap program could be an assessment tool to help improve their pain and performance when they\u2019re in space, when they get home, and in preparation for future missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are very excited to be involved with this cutting-edge research which we hope will directly support astronauts and their long-term health.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2338,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"research-group-tax":[],"primary-research-area":[],"class_list":["post-2337","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop-300x207.webp",300,207,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"large":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_Professor-James-Elliott-NASA-2-cropped_w550_h380_fcrop.webp",550,380,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ict-wordpress-support@sydney.edu.au","author_link":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/author\/ict-wordpress-supportsydney-edu-au\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) progresses its ambitious Artemis spaceflight program, Australian researchers including the Kolling Institute\u2019s Academic Director Professor James Elliott will tap into their scientific expertise to offer support. Professor Elliott attended a recent event at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Centre in Texas, which brought together leading clinicians and scientists from…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5203,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2337\/revisions\/5203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2337"},{"taxonomy":"research-group-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-group-tax?post=2337"},{"taxonomy":"primary-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary-research-area?post=2337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}