Space travel is a bit of a headache. Actually, that's underselling the problem, space travel is an enormous headache. There are so many things that can go wrong and so many things that need to be accounted for to keep astronauts safe in a cruelly punishing environment. You have to think about air, radiation, the lack of gravity ... the list goes on and on.
In research published in Neurology, 22 of 24 astronauts followed during a 7-year period of observation on the International Space Station experienced one or more instances of headache, with 378 headaches being reported over 3,596 total days in space. In addition, before going into space, only 38% of those astronauts experienced headaches; after returning to Earth, no astronaut reported experiencing headaches.
It's perhaps not surprising that headaches were worse during the first week in space, being both worse in severity and more likely to be migraine-like, but headaches continued to occur throughout each astronaut's time in space.
So, what's going on to make space both a figurative and literal headache? While the study authors stressed that the study findings only show an association between space travel and headaches, they added that it most likely comes down to the lack of gravity. Not only does zero G degrade your bones and muscles, it also affects balance and posture. Space motion sickness is extremely common, and while vomiting may be the first thing that comes to mind for astronauts who haven't gotten their space legs yet, headache is actually just a common a symptom of motion sickness.
Now obviously, there are bigger problems to tackle than space headaches when it comes to making human space travel possible. Still, it is an important issue to tackle. We don't want the first person to step foot on Mars to walk out of the lander and say "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for the ibuprofen keeping the migraines at bay."
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