Samantha Cristoforetti
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Scientists use lasers to find out why astronauts have bad skin
A team of German scientists are employing advanced imaging technology to help understand one of the unusual effects of long-term space habitation — thinning skin. Led by Professor Karsten Koenig of Saarland University, the study is an offshoot of the European Space Agency's Skin B project detailing the effects of skin aging in space. According to Reuters, his team has documented three astronauts, scanning their skin cells before and after their time on the ISS using multiphoton tomography (MPT). Koenig's company JenLab, the developer of the system, claims that its femtosecond laser pulses provide a "spatial resolution a thousand times higher than that of ultrasonic devices." It also eliminates the need for lengthy biopsy processes, instead serving up results in seconds.
