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For those who hate getting out of bed and like eating pancakes, you might be interested in this new profession offered by an international space agency.
German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft -und Raumfahrt; DLR) is offering €16,500 (about P960,000) to females who can participate in a study which requires staying in bed for 60 days, reports Live Science.
The space agency is studying ways to prevent the changes in astronauts’ bodies due to weightlessness caused by microgravity. According to DLR in a launch article on March 21, the study will require 12 females and 12 males to be on bed rest for 60 days.
The experiment, called Artificial Gravity Bed Rest Study (AGBRESA), will simulate weightlessness with bed rest. The participants will have to do everything lying down including “experiments, meals and leisure pursuits,” DLR stated.
Nutritionists will also be curating the meals so that the participants do not gain weight, but still get the nutrients they need. the space agency, however, said that the meals will not be “extra healthy,” as per Live Science. Pancakes and sweets will also be served.
This study aims to find a way to prevent effects of weightlessness in astronauts such as muscle and bone atrophy and body fluids shifting to their heads. Scientists have created a centrifuge, which will be used to create artificial gravity by spinning the participants around for 30 minutes daily.
The first round of the study is currently ongoing, but DLR is still looking for healthy women for the second round, which will last from September to December 2019 at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Cologne, Germany.
The female participants must be healthy nonsmokers aged 24 to 55 years old. They must also be able to speak German.
The German Aerospace Center, together with European Space Agency (ESA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), will soon be able to let astronauts stay for longer periods of time in outer space if the study succeeds. Casey Eridio/JB
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