9 Superaging Lessons From Our Astronauts

Americans who have been in space live longer and have more active lives than most of us. What’s their secret?

Kevin Cook,

AARP

Comments

Published October 16, 2024

Former astronauts (from left) Buzz Aldrin, Eileen Collins and Charles Bolden. Research has found astronauts live longer than the general population.

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images via Getty Images; Photo by Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Photo by Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Getty Images (2))

Astronauts are a select group, chosen for intelligence, fitness and motivation. They are also, largely, living much longer than the rest of us. A 2017 study found that male astronauts lived about seven and a half years longer than the general population, while female astronauts lived five years longer. The most famous space crew of all featured Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, who lived to be 82; Michael Collins, who went on to serve as an Assistant Secretary of State and the director of the National Air and Space Museum before dying peacefully at 90; and Buzz Aldrin, still vigorous and cantankerous at 94.

Of the twelve humans who have walked on the moon, four are still alive. Their average age: 91. Aldrin has urged NASA to speed up its upcoming missions by posting social-media photos of himself in a T-shirt reading GET YOUR ASS TO MARS. “You may get older chronologically, but you don’t have to grow an old-person mentality,” he wrote in his 2016 book, No Dream Is Too High.

Long work lives are also not uncommon among astronauts: Charles Bolden, now 77, was 62 when he stepped into the executive suite; he ran NASA from 2009 to 2017. Why do so many astronauts seem to live long and prosper? Robert Reynolds, who compared 60 years of data on astronauts’ health and longevity to that of professional athletes, suggests “that cardiovascular fitness in particular is the most important factor in astronaut longevity.”

But it turns out that’s only one factor. Interviews with astronauts and other experts turned up several more rules to live by if you want to age like a spaceman:

1. Be open to failure

If taking a new project or late-life job sounds daunting, imagine being one of the astronauts who pioneered the Mercury program in the 1950s and ’60s. They volunteered for hazardous duty at a time when no human had ever flown into space. As John Glenn remembered, “We didn’t know if our eyes would pop out of our heads!” Glenn was 40 when he became the first American to orbit Earth, and 77 when he returned to fly on the space shuttle Discovery in 1998. He served as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and lived to be 95. Astronaut Eileen Collins, 67, was the first woman to command a U.S. space mission when she served as commander of the shuttle Columbia in 1999. As Collins has said of astronauts, “We want to explore. We’re curious people.” Aldrin, who will turn 95 next year, has a motto that expresses his brand of upbeat fearlessness: “Failure is always an option.”

2. Stay fit

Want cardiovascular fitness? Some current and former astronauts are triathletes. Many work out at NASA’s state-of-the-art fitness center in Building 26 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, striving for what the agency calls “superfitness.” Glenn, who served as a director of the American Federation for Aging Research, kept up a rigorous fitness program into his nineties. Current and former astronauts do the same — not only to help stave off osteoporosis and other physical maladies, but to increase their chances of preventing or delaying Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. “It’s important to remember that the brain is part of the body,” says Saralyn Mark, M.D., a former advisor to NASA, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the White House who helped oversee NASA’s medical program. “We're all aging all the time," she said, but physical activity can help our brains as well as our bodies.

3. Get regular checkups

“Each year they fly us to Houston for full physical,” says Jim Wetherbee, 71, the only American to command five missions to space. The result is a wealth of data NASA’s medical teams use to monitor the health of aging astronauts. Medical baselines are key to medical strategies later in life. If you don’t know what your blood panel showed when you were 50, how would you know how you’re doing at 60?

4. Eat right

Space travel can cause muscles to atrophy and bones to lose density, a problem familiar to older Americans dealing with osteoporosis. With the agency’s scientists helping them monitor their weight and general health, many astronauts and former astronauts made diet a key part of their healthy lives. “I get up every morning, arrange all the pills and vitamins I have to take, pour a cup of coffee, and enjoy my breakfast,” wrote Aldrin in his book. He often enjoys a protein-rich breakfast of steak, eggs and an avocado. According to NASA, “Eating healthily benefits the human body, both on Earth and in space.”

5. Be grateful

According to Jim Lovell, 96, commander of Apollo 13. “I don’t worry about crises any longer. To reach 60 or 70 is to be ahead of the evolutionary game that shaped us,” Lovell told the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Having survived the Apollo program’s worst mishap and returning safely to Earth in 1970, he is now the oldest living astronaut. Facing a problem, Lovell learned to tell himself, “I’m still here. I’m still breathing.”

6. Keep learning

“Neuroplasticity is vital,” Mark says, noting that astronauts from Glenn and his Mercury program colleagues to the crews on the International Space Station have kept up their mental as well as physical fitness with hobbies, both in space and on Earth. In a sense, neuroplasticity — the constant creation of new connections in the brain — can help keep us mentally young. “Astronauts listen to music. Some play music," she said, adding that knitting, doing crosswords, learning a language — those things are all good for the brain, as is dancing. Aldrin joined the cast of Dancing with the Stars when he was 80. Voted off almost as fast as if he were in an ejector seat, he still got several standing ovations. “The more physically active you are,” Mark says, “the more you’re exercising the neurons in your brain.”

7. Don’t forget social connections

Apollo 11 astronaut Collins called his greatest challenge “getting along with people,” including hiring, firing, and managing others as an Assistant Secretary of State and in other positions. NASA encourages social traditions like pre- and post-mission gatherings for flight crews and support personnel. Wetherbee recalls one that helped keep him grounded in the duties of real life. “As commander, I hosted an after-landing party following one of my missions— a chance for the crew to thank our support crews and our own families. We had a great time, but it went on pretty late. Finally, after the last guest left, my wife told me, ‘Great flight, big boy. Now take out the garbage.’”

8. Stay vigilant about COVID

The virus appears to be here to stay. “We’ve accepted a new narrative — don’t worry about COVID — but we’re still losing too many people,” says Mark, who believes long COVID poses an underappreciated threat. “COVID-19 dysregulates the immune system, damages blood vessels and impacts the brain. It may be associated with premature dementia. We’ve seen relapses of shingles, Lyme disease, and Epstein-Barr in patients with COVID-19.” She recommends staying masked in social settings. “I hear people say, ‘I went into a room and there was nobody there, so why wear a mask?’ I ask them, ‘What about two minutes ago?’ If you’ve ever gone into an empty room that smelled of cigarette smoke, that’s a good way to think of it. COVID-19, spread through aerosol transmission, can linger in the same way.” Astronaut Wetherbee, author of Controlling Risk in a Dangerous World, swears by another simple precaution. At conventions or speeches where he knows he’ll spend hours in a crowd, “I carry a little bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket. You don’t have to be blatant about it. If you’re chatting and shaking hands, just make sure not to touch your mouth or nose before you take a brief hand-sanitizer moment.”

9. Boldly go

William Shatner isn’t an official astronaut, but Star Trek’s Captain Kirk knows many of them and joined them as a space traveler when he flew on Blue Origin’s 2021 mission, becoming the first nonagenarian to see the Earth from miles above. “It changes you,” says Shatner, now 93. “For me, life’s still an adventure. It’s what has helped keep me young, whether it’s scuba diving, traveling, or flying into space.” Like many of us, he sometimes feels more like staying at home than launching the next trek. “I’ve got a family trip to Italy coming up this week, and I’m looking on it with some apprehension. It would be easy to say, ‘I don’t wanna go.’ It upsets your routines. It takes you out of your comfort zone — the awful lines at the airport, the discomfort — but you’ve got to push through all that, because it’s worth it. Boldly go! This winter I’m taking a trip to Antarctica.”

%{postComment}%