Mock Mars mission reveals salt surprise

摘要

They survived a "mission to Mars" that helped us understand the challenges of isolation. Now the crew who participated in a mock trip to the Red Planet may have helped overturn a longstanding assumption of how our body deals with dietary salt. The Mars 500 mission, which ended in November 2011, was a dry run for a real Mars mission. It saw six volunteers confined for 520 days in a mocked-up spacecraft at the State Research Centre Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow, Russia. It also provided a chance to perform otherwise difficult experiments on diet. It is known that dietary salt is rapidly excreted in urine. As it passes through the kidneys it helps them to eliminate unwanted fluids. But too much salt in the bloodstream can hamper the ability of kidneys to remove water, increasing blood pressure and adversely affecting health.