We don’t have a huge group of astronauts to know for sure, but mostly astronauts live about as long as people who are not astronauts.
There is a slightly higher chance they will have cancer, and a few have died doing the non-space part of their job like testing new planes, but they don’t tend to die more than other pilots, just more then non-pilots
Recent research has shown that telomeres, the regions of DNA that ‘cap’ your chromosomes, lengthen during spaceflight but then shorten upon return to Earth, becoming shorter than before the astronaut went to space.
The length of these telomeres can be a biological indicator of age-related illnesses like dementia, so it is possible that astronauts may have a higher chance of suffering from these illnesses, though we do not yet have enough data to support this conclusion.
As more and more commercial astronauts launch to space, we will be able to collect more data and better understand the effects of spaceflight on human health.
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DrLukeF commented on :
Recent research has shown that telomeres, the regions of DNA that ‘cap’ your chromosomes, lengthen during spaceflight but then shorten upon return to Earth, becoming shorter than before the astronaut went to space.
The length of these telomeres can be a biological indicator of age-related illnesses like dementia, so it is possible that astronauts may have a higher chance of suffering from these illnesses, though we do not yet have enough data to support this conclusion.
As more and more commercial astronauts launch to space, we will be able to collect more data and better understand the effects of spaceflight on human health.