Helmholtz Association

08. January 2013 German Aerospace Center (DLR)

For 205 days in 2011, Jens Titze, Professor of Electrolyte and Circulatory Research at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and his team strictly controlled the diet for the Mars500 test subjects during their virtual flight to Mars. Sometimes the selected food contained a lot of salt, sometimes very little. The unexpected result of the longest sodium metabolism study to date was that the assumption that the human body would excrete the salt within 24 hours was incorrect. Instead, the human body stores salt for much longer before releasing it – an important discovery for medical research and patient care.

Mars500 project – salt balance of the Mars 'astronauts'

For 205 days in 2011, Jens Titze, Professor of Electrolyte and Circulatory Research at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and his team strictly controlled the diet for the Mars500 test subjects during their virtual flight to Mars. Sometimes the selected food contained a lot of salt, sometimes very little. The unexpected result of the longest sodium metabolism study to date was that the assumption that the human body would excrete the salt within 24 hours was incorrect. Instead, the human body stores salt for much longer before releasing it – an important discovery for medical research and patient care.

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12.01.2013