NASA weighs the ethics of sending astronauts into space for years

Since NASA launched MAVEN on a yearlong mission to Mars at the end of last year, the organization has been thinking about sending more people into space for longer periods of time. To prep for these kinds of missions, NASA asked the Institute of Medicine, the health division of the National Academy of Sciences, to come up with ethics standards it can use to decide if long-term missions can be carried out even if they go against current health standards.
NASA's most recent health standards divide missions into five tiers of risk and outline how it will help astronauts before, during, and after those missions. But the organization knows some missions that send astronauts into space for years at a time — like a proposed three-year-long...
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