Japanese astronaut suffers space sickness

You might have thought the last career anyone who suffers from travel sickness would choose is being an astronaut.

Not so for Japanese flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa, (47), who tweeted this week that space travel was giving him motion dizziness.


Sickly feeling:u00a0 Japanese flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa tweeted that he felt unwell

He posted from the International Space Station (ISS) that his 'head feels heavy' following his launch on a Soyuz spaceship last Wednesday. He tweeted: 'Subjectively. Space motion sickness got me. Especially when I move my head suddenly, I really feel sick. My head feels heavy. Help!'

But he calmed his followers' concerns by explaining about two-thirds of first flyers experience 'transient space motion sickness'.

'It is considered a brain's adaptation process to weightlessness,' he tweeted later. 'Your head feels heavy due to fluid shift.'

Dr Furukawa trained as a medical doctor in Tokyo and worked until 1999 when he began training to become an astronaut.

Many astronauts experience mild symptoms such as mild headaches, but others can suffer from prolonged vomiting.