Space is a stressful environment for living things, also in some ways that aren’t entirely obvious. The level of radiation and zero or micro gravity make us age very quickly.

“Time in space matters. If you spend 10 days in space, you’re fine. Twenty-one days, it’s a bit of a challenge,” said Catriona Jamieson, director of UC San Diego’s Sanford Stem Cell Institute.

In partnership with NASA she and fellow researchers have rocketed stem cells up to the International Space Station to see how they behave, and how they can affect our health.

What they learned is that stem cells become very stressed in space. They begin to divide and mutate, and that’s not good.

“If we reduce our stem cell component we have bone marrow failure and we can’t make a normal immune system. We lose an immune syste

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