Hibernation research could lead to new weight loss medicines — could it also help astronauts in space?

Hi­ber­na­tion re­search is one step clos­er to tak­ing off.

NASA has giv­en a grant to a project from Fau­na Bio and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado to fig­ure out how to send a hi­ber­nat­ing squir­rel to space. The re­searchers want to learn whether hi­ber­na­tion can pro­tect as­tro­nauts from health threats they face on long space flights, such as mus­cle and bone loss, as well as ra­di­a­tion.

The $175,000 grant, which is part of NASA’s ear­ly-stage tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram, will en­able the re­searchers to de­sign a ves­sel that could be put on the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion to study a hi­ber­nat­ing squir­rel. The project is still in its in­fan­cy, but the long-term hope is that the ves­sel could one day be used to test mol­e­cules that can mim­ic the changes seen in hi­ber­nat­ing an­i­mals.

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