Houston Chronicle, April 19, 2007 HOUSTON -- The first astronauts headed for Mars will be carrying a lot more than a first-aid kit. NASA might consider equipping a Mars-bound spacecraft with a centrifuge, a rotating mechanism in which astronauts could spin to help avoid the bone loss that accompanies long space travel. Deep-space voyagers also may train to use computers with counseling software to diagnose depression or resolve the conflicts that seem sure to arise among crew members. Most likely, future deep-space travel will require a combination of new gadgetry, medications, as well as careful screening to select the healthiest astronauts, something the space pioneers of the Apollo era called The Right Stuff. However, it may be just as effective to use an onboard centrifuge. Recently, 15 volunteers participated in a three-week bed-rest study at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Bed-rest studies, which require the heads of the volunteers to be slightly lower then the rest of their bodies, simulate many of the physical effects of weightlessness.