Spaceflight-associated Motion Sickness in Commercial Crew Astronauts
How to prepare an accurate paper press kit? Illustrated guide
Torin K. Clark, Aaron A. Allred, Jaime Mateus, Marissa Rosenberg · arXiv: 2610.24216v1 · Summary page
Why cover this story this week?
Space travel’s unsettled stomach
For commercial astronauts, adjusting to weightlessness can be a decidedly physical ordeal. A study of eight crew members on the Polaris Dawn and Fram2 missions found that seven experienced space motion sickness and five vomited. In two participants, symptoms persisted for at least three days in orbit. After returning to Earth, four experienced readaptation motion sickness, although it was significantly less severe and tended to be shorter-lived than sickness in space.
The cohort is small, but the researchers used a standardized reporting method to track symptoms rather than relying mainly on recollections after landing. This preprint offers a baseline for understanding an operationally disruptive problem as commercial spaceflight expands. It does not establish how representative these eight flyers are of future passengers.
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