Space changes your eyes in some pretty unnatural ways
Author: Cherish11,22,2021Views: 1360
In 2009, astronaut Michael Barratt saw something strange in space.
He was in the middle of a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station when objects that used to look clear started looking blurry. Barratt asked crewmate Robert Thirsk to examine his eyes.
Thirsk saw the "classic signs" of a vision problem caused by extended stays in space. When Barratt returned the favor and examined Thirsk's eyes, he spotted the very same signs.
These weren't the first astronauts to experience vision changes in space. Four years earlier, John Phillips had similar problems on the space station.
But these days, astronauts aren't the only ones floating around in space. Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have both sampled low gravity. Even William Shatner managed to become a bonafide spacefarer five decades after captaining the Starship Enterprise. ??
Most notably, a group of four civilians with day jobs completed the three-day SpaceX mission, Inspiration4. They orbited the globe without a trained astronaut on board for the first time in history.
And that was just 2021.
But for all the celebration that surrounds these off-planet vacations, it's easy to forget that the human body was never really meant to leave Earth. Inside the awestruck eyes of astronauts, things are changing — and the changes could be permanent.
