The Space Twins

NASA Press Note: 11th December, 2015

“The International Space Station (ISS) Trio returns safely to Earth after 141 Day Mission.

Expedition 45 crew members Kjell Lindgren of NASA, Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos (Russian Federal Space Agency) and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) safely concluded their nearly 5 month mission aboard the massive orbiting lab complex ISS with a soft landing on the frozen  Kazakhstan ground at approximately 8:12 a.m. EST (7:12 p.m. Kazakhstan time).

The trio, led by Soyuz commander Kononenko, left behind three more comrades from Russia and America who would remain aboard the ISS until early March 2016. The three crew members included the first ever One Year Mission crew comprising Station Commander Rohan Verma of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos. Both of them are on the ISS since the last week of March 2015.

Dr. Rohan Verma was selected along with his twin brother Dr. Sohan Verma who remained on the ground as a part of the NASA’s Space Twin experiment. Both Rohan and Sohan are Indian Americans”

On November 02, 2015, the ISS had celebrated 15 years of continuous human presence since its launch on 20^th November 1998. ISS had been assembled in space with the help of the parts sent by American Space Shuttles as well as Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets. The ISS is scheduled to stay in orbit up to year 2024.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Now the largest artificial body in orbit consists of pressurized modules, external trusses, four huge solar arrays and many other parts that keep the ISS functioning. The ISS weighs approximately 450,000 kg and measures 72 m x 108m x 20m including the pressurized chamber of 1000 cubic meters. It travels at a speed of 8 km/sec (more than 17000 miles per hour) and completes one orbit around earth in 93 minutes at around 400 km above earth.

The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars.

Rohan Verma was participating in the first international One Year Mission with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko — the goal of which was to study the effects of life in space on the human body in a variety of experiments.

RohanVerma’s identical twin brother, fellow astronaut, and former NASA Commander Sohan Verma was also participating in the experiment living comfortably on earth during that same time. Since Rohan and Sohan were of the same age, same fitness level, and had identical genetics, they made the perfect test subjects for studies on human physiology, behavioral health, microbiome and molecular continuity. They were the subjects of NASA’s Twin Study.

NASA had planned to take samples and making measurements of the twins before, during, and after the one-year mission, said Craig Kundrot of NASA's Human Research Program at the Johnson Space Center. For the first time, they were to study two individuals who were genetically identical.

NASA had signed up 10 scientific teams to study data gathered from the twins. Because the Vermas had virtually the same genetic material, NASA planned to study how long-duration space flight affected the human body and mind, using Sohan, who remained on the ground, as the basis. This twin study would help NASA prepare to take humans farther than ever before, with immediate eyes on the upcoming manned mission to Mars.

Before, during and after Rohan’s flight, the Vermas were to undergo physical and cognitive tests. The weightlessness, the radiation, the isolation and confinement are a number of things that really affect the space travelers. Sohan was to undergo six tests; Rohan about 11 tests. One test would assess how fluid in the body got redistributed in microgravity. Another would gauge changes to blood cells and the immune system. The twins were to provide saliva, blood, urine and fecal samples, had blood pressure and other measurements taken and use laptops to answer arithmetic and risk-taking questions. It was easier for Sohan. A team of medical staff on the ground was doing it for him. On the other hand Rohan onboard the ISS had to draw his own blood, freeze it, and send it home along with the other samples on ships returning to earth from the space station periodically. Inside the ISS chamber in the weightless condition of the human body every physical activity involved weird movements of the body and skill in managing floating objects around in the spaceship chamber.   

The Vermas 49, were from New Jersey and were the only twins to have traveled in space. Both were Navy captains before joining NASA. Since retiring from NASA three years ago, Sohan Verma had been running a political action committee with his American wife, a former Arizona Congresswoman. Recently he and his wife released a book, “Our Fight to Keep America Safe from Gun Violence.” Rohan had married a girl from India. He had two daughters. When both of them entered their teenage, his wife thought it unsafe to have them totally influenced by the American society culture. She decided to move them to India before it was too late. With the consent from Rohan she shifted to India along with the two daughters before Rohan embarked on NASA’s One Year Mission. Both Rohan and Sohan had come to USA after their schooling in New Delhi and became US citizens in a few years after their arrival. Their father had worked in the Foreign Office in many countries before settling in USA.

Sohan who chose to remain on ground though conceded, “Nothing compares to just looking out of the windows of the space station. You look out the window for 10 minutes and you can see both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. So I miss that. And when I think that it’s very likely that I’ll never see that again, I get a little bummed out about it.”

Rohan and Sohan had a closely guarded secret between them that they had never shared with anybody, including their parents, families, friends and even NASA. They could swap their bodies with each other. Rohan could enter into Sohan’s body and simultaneously Sohan in Rohan’s! It was a gift from Mother Nature which they had accidently found out in their school days. They themselves did not how it happened but with a mutual consent they could enter each other’s body in a fraction of a second, remain there for some time and could switch back to their own again in a moment. Both of them made a deal that they would never use this feat for a bad cause and would never cheat on each other even after their marriage. They had always remained faithful to each other. Throughout their life they tried to solve this mystery without letting anybody know about their secret. They read a lot many books on the subject, both from the Indian and other cultures, talked to many medical professionals, psychologists, spiritual gurus etc. but could never solve this mystery. They seemed to possess some strange inseparable and invisible bond with each other right from the days when they were in their mother’s womb together. Or probably something unusual had happened when they were there. They wondered whether all the pairs of twins had this capacity and how many of them actually knew it and practiced it.

Long back it was a day of school picnic which both Rohan and Sohan were eagerly looking forward to. Right in the morning on the picnic day Rohan had a viral fever and he had to drop out. Sohan had to go to picnic alone. Both of them were extremely disappointed. At lunch time Sohan frantically remembered Rohan and wondered what Rohan must be going through. He wished it should have been other way round. Rohan should have got the chance to attend the picnic. Sohan could have stayed back. Rohan, lying on his cot in their bedroom also was thinking about the picnic. And suddenly he found himself on the picnic spot surrounded by his classmates. At the same time Sohan found that he was lying on his cot in their bedroom and could actually feel the fever running through his body. Both of them did not realize what was happening. Rohan and Sohan, both had a strange feeling and knew that something weird was happening. They were scared but were unaware about how the other one was feeling at that time. In a few moments they hurriedly returned to their own self.

In the evening they shared this strange experience with each other and understood that it was something unusual. They could see the world through each other’s eyes. That day they could not understand much about it. As the days, months and years went by; they consciously repeated the experimented and concluded that they could do the body swap whenever both of them were ready to do it. With a prior arrangement, they would sit quietly and wait for swap to happen. Strangely both of them remained conscious that they were experiencing the world through other’s body during the swap till it lasted. They also mastered the technique of returning into their own self after signaling each other.

Rohan and Sohan decided to solve this puzzle themselves without letting anybody knowing it as it would have invited ridicule and isolation from the people around them. Both of them did not want unnecessary publicity till they themselves understood the mechanism of the swap fully. Both of them searched whatever literature they could get on such things. Those were not the days of Internet. The ancient Indian literature called it, Parakaya Pravesha. But the details given in the literature were very sketchy and vague. They bordered on mythology and thought experiments at the most. At one place they found a mention of how the Parakaya Ppravesha could be achieved.  “That is the power to leave your body consciously and enter into a new one, is simple, “one sage wrote, “the first step is to overcome your identification with your body and mind. You are not your body and mind. You are pure consciousness. The visible world could not be real. It is just an aberration. The body and mind are the images projected on the screen of your consciousness. Free your consciousness from the identification with one body and mind and get projected a new image on your consciousness.” This description was of no practical value.

On the other hand most of the Western literature branded the body swaps as purely fictional. In a body swap the sensory nerves in one body needed to be rewired to another brain coming from the swapped body. This would require re-connecting millions of neurons in the brain. Hence the fictional body swaps don’t invoke brain transplants. It’s more of a swapping of minds, suggesting a dualistic philosophy, where mind and brain are separate things. This is in contrast to a monistic stance (mind is created by the brain) which most scientists would likely adhere to, given that a separate mind is unobservable and as far as we know scientific analysis of it is impossible.

But let’s just assume that the mind can be separated from the body and, by whatever means, transferred into a different one, meaning the body is now inhabited by a new consciousness. That fact that the mind needs to inhabit a body suggests a Cartesian dualist set-up, where mind and body are separate but interdependent, so the mind still needs to use the brain. There would still be a lot of issues to contend with. For example, memories are physically stored in the brain. Even if the newly transferred mind brings its own memories with it, now there are 2 sets of memories in one head (one physical, one purely mental)? That’s going to be disorientating.

Whatever the literature said Rohan and Sohan were happily enjoying the swaps. They mainly used to share their experiences with each other’s body when they were geographically separated from each other. The distance between them was never a problem. Only precaution they took was to perform the swap only when both of them were completely ready for it and had confirmed it in advance. Any error on their part could prove to be catastrophic. They never wanted a situation when one of them had left his body and is hanging around and the other one has not come out from his. Otherwise they had a wonderful time with this unique and unusual gift from the Mother Nature.

They also believed that the ability of swapping the bodies could not be unique to them alone. Many other twins in the world must also be gifted with the same but they may not be aware about it. Or those pair of twins did not dare to perform the swap out of a fear of unknown. Rohan and Sohan started thinking about the possible applications of the technique assuming it could be fully understood and developed in other human beings. Being space scientists themselves they thought of proposing this technique for long duration space travels. Suppose, one of the twins is traveling in the spaceship, the other remains on the ground. Every few weeks they interchange their roles. This way the monotony of the space travel could be eliminated completely. It will be a revolution in the history of space travel.

When Rohan and Sohan were finally selected for the Space Twin experiment by NASA they were thrilled and made a secret plan. By the end of the yearlong stay of Rohan on ISS they would perform a body swap for a couple of days. By that time NASA would have collected sufficient data on them and the couple of days’ swap won’t have any significant effect on NASA’s science findings. Sohan had previous experience of space flights and knew very well the space protocols for communication with the ground station and the other fellow space travelers. They were confident that nobody in the spaceship or on the ground would doubt about their swapping with each other. They would get a chance to try the swap for the first time out in space for the benefit of the entire human race. They had never tried it earlier during their space travel although they did get a few opportunities to do so.

Rohan and Sohan, as a safeguard, had mastered the technique of aborting the swap anytime in case one or both of them faced an unexpected hurdle before the swap was complete. For the current mission, they worked out every small detail about their secret plan much before the start of the One Year Mission. They knew that once Rohan was up in the space they would not get any opportunity to discuss with each other on the radio link or in the email communications that would be definitely monitored by the ground control.

On February 25, 2016, as planned by Rohan and Sohan, they could successfully swap their bodies with each other. Sohan was now in Rohan’s body onboard the ISS and Rohan was in the Sohan’s body on the ground. They had decided to re-swap their bodies after a couple of days on 27th February 2016 as Rohan would then start preparing for his ground return. Sohan had no difficulty in dealing with the ground control and other members of his crew after ‘he’ reached onboard the ISS. Everything was going smooth and as per their plan.

But as the luck would have it on 26^th Febuary 2016, the ground control center called Rohan and said…”We’re going to privatize the space-to-ground communication system in five minutes. The chief of the astronaut office wants to talk to you.”

Sohan inside Rohan’s body knew that it must be a bad news.

After a couple of minutes the chief came on line and gave the bad news to Rohan that shattered Sohan completely. He instantly understood that he was in a very deep trouble that would throw his life to toss. The chief continued,

“Dr. Rohan, last evening your brother Dr. Sohan Verma had attended a press party along with his wife and the Arizona congresswoman. After the party was over by midnight everybody was coming out from the venue of the party. Suddenly an unidentified gunman came on a motor bike and started firing at the guests indiscriminately from his automatic. Five people died on the spot and many were left injured. Dr. Sohan Verma and his wife got bullet injuries in their head and both of them were immediately shifted to an operation theatre. Mrs. Verma, unfortunately, succumbed to her injuries before she could be operated. The surgery on Dr Soahn Verma was performed successfully, however, and he was shifted to an ICU. Dean of the hospital has informed us that Dr. Sohan Verma has gone into coma and they were unsure when he came out of it. We all at NASA hope for his speedy recovery. We all share your shock and grief at this juncture. Have a nice day and see you on your return.”

Sohan in Rohan’s body was dumbfounded.

Sohan felt very sad after hearing the news of the death of his Congresswoman wife. But strangely he felt proud of her. He had joined her fight against the American Gun Culture only recently. But she had been spearheading the campaign for the last many years. She was also aware about the threats to her life from the powerful lobbies of arms manufacturers and protectors of gun rights for the law abiding citizens. The second part of the news, however, shattered him to the core. “What happens now?”  Sohan started thinking to himself. “Can I try to re-swap when Sohan (or Rohan?) was in coma? We had never performed a swap when only one of us was ready. What if I leave the body of Rohan onboard ISS and fail to go into my own on the ground? How Rohan would know about my plan? Leaving Rohan’s body unoccupied would mean Rohan’s virtual death that would bring a very bad name to the ISS project. That will be letting down the efforts of scientists and engineers from so many countries working round the clock for keeping the ISS floating in earth’s orbit.

“If I remain in Rohan’s body then I would return to ground as Dr Rohan Verma till Rohan in the ICU comes out of coma. One doesn’t know when that happens. Till then me in Rohan’s body cannot meet Rohan’s family when they return from India on a vacation.

If Rohan in my body lying in the hospital fails to perform the swap after coming out of coma due to some reason it would mean that both of us will be permanently stuck in each other’s body.”

The Ground Control was monitoring Rohan’s body parameters and advised him to go to sleep after consuming a small dose of a sedative. Sohan in Rohn’s body promptly accepted their suggestion and went to sleep.

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NASA’s One Year Mission

NASA Twin Study experiment

In the last week of March 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly joined cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko on a One-Year Mission to the International Space Station.  Their lengthy stay aims to explore the effects of long-term space flight on the human body and mind.

The interesting thing about Scott is, he's a twin.  His brother Mark Kelly, genetically identical with Scott, is also an astronaut, now retired.  While Scott, the test subject, spends one year circling Earth at 17,000 mph, Mark will remain behind as a control.

Scot Kelly is scheduled to return to ground in March 2016.