GL Brown Prize Lecture: Surviving Space: Pushing the Brain’s Limits
By Professor Damian Bailey, University of South Wales, UK
14th October 2025, 11:00 – 12:30
The lecture will be broadcast on Stadium with an opportunity for the online audience to speak with Damian following the lecture.
Please note that there is no registration for this event. You can join the livestream on Stadium (online platform) by clicking the link at 11:00 on 14 October. You can click the link in the event information here, or copy and paste it into your browser: https://bit.ly/PushingtheBrain
Abstract:
Human spaceflight is entering a transformative era of sustainable exploration, driven by the rise in space tourism and national agencies’ ambitious plans for extended missions beyond low Earth orbit. In collaboration with commercial and international partners, the Artemis program aims to establish a lunar outpost culminating in the horizon goal of a crewed mission to Mars as early as the late 2040s. This will be the most ambitious adventure humankind has ever undertaken, as we strive to transition from a terrestrial to an extraterrestrial space-faring species.
However, the journey to and habitation on the Red Planet will pose unique physiological challenges, placing unprecedented demands on crew health, performance, and medical needs. Indeed, there is no environment more unique or challenging to humans than outer space. Astronauts will have to survive the full force of the space ‘exposome’ — altered oxygen and gravity, prolonged isolation and confinement, living in a closed environment and higher doses of cosmic radiation, for up to 1,000 days on a planet located ~55 to 400 million km from Earth.
This GL Brown Prize Lecture will discuss the unique integrative physiological challenges posed by deep space exploration with a specific focus on the astronaut’s brain, including how we characterise and contain risk. It will draw upon terrestrial models of extreme physiology that explore the brain’s tolerable limits to understand better how we can adapt and overcome environmental extremes that would otherwise be considered incompatible with ‘ordinary’ human life. It will also provide personal insight into the exciting work undertaken by space agencies to support interdisciplinary research, placing physiology centre stage for mission success.
From new materials and medical breakthroughs to improved environmental and telemetrics health monitoring, resource management and countermeasure discovery, the knowledge gained through exploration science has unrivalled translational potential that can help address global challenges and diseases here on Earth. Space physiology has never been more alive, relevant and exciting — per ardua ad astra!
If you have any questions about this event, please get in touch with Katja at: katja.rietdorf@open.ac.uk