A year on the ISS: Good for tourists – and science

Victoria Jaggard, physical sciences news editor

(Image: NASA)

Is the ISS set to get its own phantom?

Reports are swirling that diva of London's West End Sarah Brightman, whose angelic voice lofted her to stardom in the original stage cast of Phantom of the Opera, is to begin training to become the next space tourist to visit the International Space Station.

But before Brightman can make the music of the night in orbit, US and Russian space agencies will have to find a way to clear a seat on the Soyuz capsule, right now the only way for humans to reach the ISS.

Restarting rides for paying customers could be part of the impetus behind news that NASA is now mulling a longer tour of duty for astronauts on the space station: a full year at a stretch, beginning as soon as 2015.

Although the ISS has been continuously occupied since 2001, astronaut crews have normally spent no more than six months at a time on board. This limit is mostly fixed by the Russian Soyuz, which carries passengers to the ISS and then stays docked to the station to serve as a landing vehicle: after about six months, the capsule's fuel has degraded too much to guarantee a safe return.

NASA's space shuttle fleet helped take some of the pressure off, since it could also ferry people and supplies to and from the station. That left the Soyuz with an occasional empty seat, which Russia began to fill with privately funded travellers. These space tourists have paid up to $40 million each for the privilege.

With the shuttles now retired, astronauts from the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe all have to vie for a ticket to ride the three-person Soyuz, leaving no room for extras. If some crews stay up past the six-month expiration date, though, tourist season would once again be open.

Ostensibly, keeping crew members on the station for a full year could help answer some burning questions about the health effects of long-duration space flight. Although we can get robots to Mars in a matter of months, most human missions are expected to take about 400 to 500 days, round trip.

Shorter stays on space stations already show that astronauts can suffer from bone-mineral loss, muscle atrophy, vision impairment and radiation exposure. There is little information for longer-lasting space flights, so it's unclear how much worse things could get in the time it takes to reach the Red Planet.

That - rather than the prospect of putting sopranos into space - may be what affects decisions during a US election year. The Obama administration is already stressing its support for a space exploration programme that will send humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars.