NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative on Oct. 4.
Roundtable discussions centered conversation around the five hazards of human spaceflight: space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, gravity, and closed or hostile environments. Many of these hazards have direct correlations to a cancer patient’s lived experience, like the isolation of a hospital room and long-term effects of radiation.
During the visit with patients at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell answered questions about spaceflight and life in space.
Patients also received a video message from NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station, and met with Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Eugene Tu, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and other agency leaders.
By connecting the dots between human space research and cancer research, NASA and the University of California hope to open doors to innovative new research opportunities. NASA is working with researchers, institutions, and agencies across the federal government to help cut the nation’s cancer death rate by at least 50% in the next 25 years, a goal of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
Learn more about the Cancer Moonshot at: