{"id":152758,"date":"2022-12-13T17:22:19","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T23:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/can-people-with-disabilities-be-astronauts-esa-shows-encouraging-signs-of-progress"},"modified":"2022-12-13T17:22:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T23:22:19","slug":"can-people-with-disabilities-be-astronauts-esa-shows-encouraging-signs-of-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/can-people-with-disabilities-be-astronauts-esa-shows-encouraging-signs-of-progress","title":{"rendered":"Can people with disabilities be astronauts? ESA shows encouraging signs of progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/can-people-with-disabilities-be-astronauts-esa-shows-encouraging-signs-of-progress3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cESA is ready to invest in defining the necessary adaptations of space hardware in an effort to enable these otherwise excellently qualified professionals to serve as professional crew members on a safe and useful space mission,\u201d said the agency in a press release in February 2021, when it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/science\/being-astronaut-is-no-longer-a-hardcore-male-domain\">first issued the call<\/a> for people with disabilities to apply for what ESA calls the \u201cParastronaut Feasibility Project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McFall\u2019s selection is a huge step forward, but it\u2019s not happening in a vacuum.<\/p>\n<p>On December 14, twelve people with different disabilities will take off on a zero-gravity flight with AstroAccess, aboard Zero Gravity Corporation\u2019s \u201cG-Force One.\u201d They\u2019ll perform experiments to help answer some key questions for astronauts with disabilities \u2014 things like how quickly a person with mobility issues can get in and out of a flight seat in microgravity, how a blind person can use textured handholds to orient themselves and navigate the cabin without gravity, and whether sign language is understandable when one person is floating upside down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cESA is ready to invest in defining the necessary adaptations of space hardware in an effort to enable these otherwise excellently qualified professionals to serve as professional crew members on a safe and useful space mission,\u201d said the agency in a press release in February 2021, when it first issued the call for people with [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}