Follow him here
http://twitter.com/#!/Astro_Satoshi
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Satoshi-Furukawa/103214133067827
http://twitter.com/#!/Astro_Satoshi
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Satoshi-Furukawa/103214133067827
'My head feels heavy... Help!': Astronaut tweets he's suffering from TRAVEL SICKNESS
You might have thought the last career anyone who suffers from travel sickness would choose is being an astronaut.
Not so for Japanese flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa, 47, who tweeted this week that space travel was giving him motion dizziness.
He posted from the International Space Station (ISS) that his ‘head feels heavy’ following his launch on a Soyuz spaceship last Wednesday.
Sick: Flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa, 47, tweeted this week from the International Space Station (ISS) that space travel is giving him travel dizziness
Dr Furukawa, a father-of-two who was born in Yokohama, Japan, is scheduled to live at the ISS for six months and docked there last Friday.
He tweeted on Monday: ‘Subjectively. Space motion sickness got me.
'Especially when I move my head suddenly, I really feel sick. My head feels heavy. Help!’
But he calmed his followers’ concerns by explaining about two-thirds of first flyers experience ‘transient space motion sickness’.
Monday tweet: 'Subjectively. Space motion sickness got me. Especially when I move my head suddenly, I really feel sick. My head feels heavy. Help!'
‘It is considered a brain’s adaptation process to weightlessness,’ he tweeted later. ‘Your head feels heavy due to fluid shift.’
Dr Furukawa trained as a medical doctor in Tokyo and worked in hospitals until 1999 when he began training to become an astronaut.
He was certified as an astronaut in 2001 and went through more scientific, technical, physiological and flight training before going into space.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said he is tweeting ‘changes in his body in space based on his experiences as a medical doctor’.
Space: Dr Furukawa is scheduled to live at the ISS for six months and docked there last Friday following his launch on a Soyuz spaceship last Wednesday
Dr Furukawa has tweeted more than 400 times and has more than 36,000 followers, although he only follows nine people himself.
Scientists say space sickness is similar to car sickness, when the inner ear detects the motion of the car but the eyes do not if staring at a page.
Many astronauts experience mild symptoms such as mild headaches, but others can suffer from prolonged vomiting.
Frank Borman on Apollo 8, Rusty Schweickart on Apollo 9 and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 are all known to have suffered from space sickness.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ns-Twitter-travel-sickness.html#ixzz1PRdGHwAN
