Having Light Bulbs on Meant Sleep Would Not Be Difficult to Come by Anymore

It has often been thought that having light bulbs on meant sleep would be difficult to come by, but this may not necessarily be the case anymore.

NASA certainly doesn't think so, as it is investing $11.4 million (£7 million) on changing the ageing fluorescent lights that are currently seen on the International Space Station's US Orbital Segment.

One of the chief reasons for the change is simply because the current bulbs are running low, however, the other reason is that new LED bulbs could help them overcome insomnia.

Sleep deprivation is a serious problem in space, with medication to help with this being the second-most common drug taken by astronauts after painkillers, according to NASA medical office and flight surgeon Smith Johnston, Yahoo reports.

Although their schedule allows for eight-and-a-half hours of sleep a night, astronauts average barely six hours every evening.

Scientists at NASA are acting on research conducted recently which stated that certain LED lighting levels can actually help ease people into sleep.

George Brainard of the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia recently said controlled experiments have shown that light at the right intensity can have alerting effects and dimmer, long-wavelength light can help prepare people for sleep.

The new LED lamps are aiming to exploit chronobiology. The fixtures, which must fit in the exact footprint of the old bulbs, comprise of more than 100 LED bulbs cloaked by a diffuser, so they initially appear to be a single panel of white light.

Elizabeth Klerman of Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine predicts that such dimmable bulbs will be seen in hospital rooms, nuclear submarines and factories.

"We're sure they'll have an effect - we just want to see what kind of effect they'll have and the size of the effect," the expert was quoted as saying.