Overview
- Published in Reproductive BioMedicine Online, the review reframes human fertility beyond Earth as an urgent, practical issue as space travel expands.
- The authors flag major evidence gaps, calling cumulative radiation effects on male fertility a critical unknown and noting scarce data from long-duration missions.
- Space conditions—cosmic radiation, microgravity and circadian disruption—are identified as biologically hostile to gametogenesis, embryogenesis and pregnancy.
- With no industry-wide rules for pregnancy risk, disclosure or research ethics, the report urges international guidelines and a collective industry ethics review board.
- Assisted reproductive technologies are portable and increasingly automated, offering potential mitigation tools that also raise governance questions for commercial operators.