Are there any physical, mental, or health-related medical conditions that could permanently exclude someone from going into space?
Do the criteria differ from one country's (government sponsored or private) program to another?
Asked
Active
Viewed 4,645 times
2 Answers
22
For NASA, candidates must be able to pass the long-duration space flight physical. Height, blood pressure, and vision are three of the physical requirements included in this test. From their website:
Astronaut Requirements
Pilots
- Distant visual acuity: 20/100 or better uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 each eye.
- Blood pressure: 140/90 measured in a sitting position.
- Height between 62 and 75 inches.
Mission Specialists
- Distance visual acuity: 20/200 or better uncorrected, correctable to 20/20, each eye.
- Blood pressure: 140/90 measured in a sitting position.
- Height between 58.5 and 76 inches.
-
1no requirements about teeth? – Jul 16 '13 at 23:37
-
3"correctable to 20/20 each eye" does that mean lazer eye surgery? and is one not allowed to wear glasses? – John Riselvato Jul 16 '13 at 23:58
-
10@trapo They eat out of tubes. Therefore, teeth are not required. Teeth are highly recommended, though, in case the food runs out and Velcro is the best source of nutrition. – Jul 17 '13 at 17:31
-
1Can g force ruin dental capsule at lift off? – Jul 17 '13 at 18:33
-
1@Undo look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11eImxr6lI – Jul 17 '13 at 20:54
-
what about surgeries done in the past? – Zgr3doo Jan 28 '16 at 10:15
-
@Zgr3doo I don't know which part of my answer your question relates to. – JohnB Jan 28 '16 at 14:27
-
@JohnB Sorry I was just wondering if any surgeries done to the candidate accounts on his suitability to the astronaut role – Zgr3doo Jan 28 '16 at 14:40
-
There are significantly more disqualifying conditions than those listed in the accepted answer. There’s a reason those are not publicly available. The presence of a surgical history in and of itself is not disqualifying - the underlying condition for which surgery was conducted may be. – JPattarini Jan 02 '19 at 20:44
-
Furthermore, while different space programs (NASA, JAXA, EXA, RSC) have some deviations from each other for internal selection standards, there are internationally agreed to medical standards that apply to ISS long-duration mission selection. So in theory an astronaut could be selected and flown on a non-ISS mission (think short duration cis-lunar, for example) yet not be medically qualified for ISS. – JPattarini Jan 02 '19 at 20:47
10
The Roscosmos requirements for the professional cosmonaut candidates are published here. The google translation seems to be intelligible.
It includes the list of medical areas of inspection:
- internal organs inspection;
- neuropsychiatric inspection;
- surgical inspection;
- ophthalmological inspection;
- otorhinolaryngologic inspection;
- dental inspection;
- functional inspection;
- gynecological examination (for women);
- psychiatric inspection;
as well as the list of assays required (all kinds of blood tests, feces, urine, 12-lead ECG, etc etc etc).
And, in particular, the set of general anthropometric requirements.
Anthropometric data (the maximal allowed values):
- height (150-190 cm);
- height in the sitting position (80-99 cm);
- weight (50-90 kg);
- foot length (29.5 cm);
- shoulders (52 cm);
- distance between the armpits (45 cm);
- hip width in the sitting position (41 cm).
-
The links are broken. Good thing you included a lot of useful information in the post. I'm not sure where to find the links, or else I'd propose an edit. – mgarey Apr 17 '19 at 17:47
-
I wonder if any short-torsoed person has ever met the height requirement but not the sitting height requirement. – ben Apr 17 '19 at 22:35
-
@mgarey Indeed. The original page is gone, as of April 2019 the current medical requirements deocument is here: http://www.gctc.ru/media/files/Otbor_kosmonavtov/perecen..medizinskih.dokumentov.pdf . And the complete set of requirements seems to be collected on this page: http://www.gctc.ru/main.php?id=3736 – Apr 18 '19 at 19:05
-