Over Coffee® is on holiday-weekend hiatus. Please enjoy this reposting of one of our top episodes of 2021, and join us again next week for another new conversation on innovation, creativity and making a difference!

(Photograph courtesy of Cooper and O’Hara Photography, and used with permission.)

This post and podcast are for informational purposes only, and are not intended as medical advice. Please contact a healthcare professional with any medical questions.

What are the challenges involved in staying healthy, when your workday occurs in zero gravity? And when radiation exposure and space dust are valid concerns?

That’s the focus of Dr. Shawna Pandya’s career.

As a physician, Dr. Pandya wears multiple “hats”. In addition to being Vice-President of Immersive Medicine at Sasketchewan-based virtual-reality pioneer Luxsonic Technologies Inc., she is a citizen-scientist astronaut with Boulder, Colorado-based Project PoSSUM. This 501c nonprofit uses astronautics to study the role of our upper atmosphere in climate change. {“PoSSUM” is an acronym for “Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere”.

In addition, she serves as Director of Medical Research at Orbital Assembly Corporation, the world’s first large-scale space-construction company.

Dr. Pandya, who completed her citizen-astronaut training in 2015, was a member of Project PoSSUM’s first crew to test a commercial spacesuit in zero gravity. Today, she serves as Director of Space Medicine for Project PoSSUM.

And, as you’ll see on her website, she’s currently working on obtaining her private pilot’s license, is an aquanaut and has given multiple TEDx speeches.

In our prerecorded 2021 conversation, Dr. Pandya talked about the considerations of space medicine, what’s involved in keeping the crew healthy, and what’s next for her, as a citizen-science astronaut.

On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:

• What first inspired Dr. Pandya’s passion for space science;
  

• Why “space is trying to kill you”, as Dr. Pandya says;
  

• What it’s like to be in zero gravity!
  

• What’s involved in mitigating some of the health risks of space;
  

• What Dr. Pandya might pack for travel to the Moon or to Mars;
  

• How a medical emergency might be handled, if one occurs in space;
  

• A look at the virtual-reality space-medicine training program Dr. Pandya has created, with Luxsonic; Technologies;
  

• What the results of Dr. Pandya’s space-medicine research can mean, for maintaining good health on Earth;
  

• What’s next in her journey, as a citizen-science astronaut.