Dear Maya,

I mostly keep all four paws on the ground. It’s hard to imagine living out in space.

I asked my friend Erica Crespi about it. She’s a biologist at Washington State University. She  studies how animals tolerate stressors faced in the environment—including how humans can live and thrive in space.

Crespi told me that Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov lived on the Mir Space Station for 437 days and 18 hours in the 1990s. So far, that’s the record for living in space.

Polyakov’s job was to test the effects of a long space flight—like maybe a trip to Mars. He handled … » More …

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