{"id":24621,"date":"2025-03-21T01:42:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T01:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=24621"},"modified":"2025-03-21T01:42:21","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T01:42:21","slug":"nasa-astronaut-bizarrely-grew-2-inches-taller-after-340-days-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=24621","title":{"rendered":"NASA astronaut bizarrely grew 2 inches taller after 340 days in space"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Space does some strange things to the human body, but there has been perhaps no stranger occurrence than when one now-retired NASA astronaut somehow grew two whole inches during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS).<\/p>\n

If you’ve been following the events of stranded\u00a0NASA<\/a>\u00a0astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams closely then you’ll know the challenges that they’ve faced with regards to their\u00a0health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photos released last year worried people online as\u00a0Williams’ appeared to look dangerously thin and unhealthy<\/a>, and while NASA\u00a0assured everyone<\/a>\u00a0that she was all OK, it certainly drew attention to the strange effects that living in\u00a0space<\/a>\u00a0can cause.<\/p>\n

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Astronauts are monitored closely by doctors and scientists following their return to Earth (Keegan Barber\/NASA via Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

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Your body isn’t used to living in low or zero gravity environments, and thus you can very easily\u00a0shed significant muscle and also suffer from bone density loss<\/a>\u00a0as your muscles – including your heart – don’t have to work anywhere near as hard even if you do\u00a0hours of exercise every single day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet Williams’ health concerns look fairly mundane compared to retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who upon return from a staggering 340 day stay on board the ISS returned two inches taller than he was a year earlier, as reported by\u00a0CNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scott’s case was a particularly intriguing one when it comes to studying the effects of space travel on the human body, as he happened to have an identical twin brother who was also an astronaut.<\/p>\n

Mark Kelly, Scott’s twin, was down on Earth during the latter’s lengthy ISS expedition, and measuring him up against his twin was what allowed\u00a0scientists<\/a>\u00a0to discover the bizarre change.<\/p>\n

Researchers also conducted a number of genetic tests between the pair of twins, as it’s not exactly common to get a near perfect way to analyze the immediate differences shortly after space travel in two genetically similar test subjects.<\/p>\n

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\"Scott\"Scott<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Scott grew two inches taller than his twin brother Mark after staying in space for nearly a year (Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images for Breitling)<\/cite><\/div>\n

Like almost everything in space though, Scott managed to somehow grow taller due to the effects of gravity on his body. On Earth the disks in your spinal column are compressed and fixed in place, whereas the lack of gravity in space causes these to loosen, expand, and in turn lengthen your spine overall.<\/p>\n

This is a particularly prevalent case due to the length of time that Kelly spent consecutively in the environment in space, affording a much greater expansion of his spinal column and therefore a more noticeable increase in his height.<\/p>\n

Other bizarre side effects that are caused by the shift in gravity include a hypersensitivity that leads to\u00a0‘baby-like’ skin<\/a>, as your clothes otherwise float above your body when you’re in space, alongside a\u00a0difficulty learning how to talk again<\/a>\u00a0as the tongue naturally floats in low gravity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Space does some strange things to the human body, but there has been perhaps no stranger occurrence than when one now-retired NASA astronaut somehow grew two whole inches … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24623,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24621\/revisions\/24623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}