prepare your body for this long journey

It would take a journey of 225 million kilometers to reach the planet Mars from Earth. Months and months in weightlessness. But then how to physically support such a trip? We have to go to the Toulouse space clinic where we try to answer this question. Geoffrey has been bedridden for 26 days. He is halfway through this extraordinary experience. “At first it was a bit hard, we had back pain, the first three days, time to get used to lying down and from the fifth day, nothing. Now it feels like ‘to be flat’says the patient.

Reproduce effects similar to those experienced in space

However, his legs are higher than his head since the bed was scrupulously tilted by the doctors. “We put the bed at minus six degrees, so with an inclination, the head slightly downwards. This allows a distribution of liquids in the body, which produces effects similar to what occurs in space”, details the head of the clinic. Twelve volunteers take part in the experiment. This one focuses this time only on men.