Microscopic astronauts’ space lab takes pioneering journey
Space travel involving animals is nothing new but a British contribution to the International Space Station may be harnessing the smallest species yet.
The UK Space Agency (UKSA) funded Fluorescent Deep Space Petri-Pods (FDSPP) project has launched a ‘crew’ of microscopic worms inside a miniature space laboratory.
Led by the universities of Exeter and Leicester, it is designed to help reveal new information about the effects of long-duration travel in orbit by testing how the organisms respond to the extremes faced by human astronauts.
The C. elegans nematode worms, just 1mm long, were launched on NASA’s Northrop Grumman CRS-24 Mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently.
On arrival at the ISS, their self-contained Petri Pod measuring 10x10x30cm and weighing around 3kg will spend time inside the ISS before being attached outside.
This will expose it to the vacuum and radiation of space along with microgravity for up to 15 weeks.
Inside the unit are 12 experimental chambers, of which four of which can be imaged using fluorescent and white light. The chambers maintain temperature, pressure and a trapped volume of air for organisms to breathe when exposed to the vacuum of space. Food and water are supplied by an agar carrier.
The University of Exeter’s Dr Tim Etheridge explained: “NASA's Artemis programme marks a new era of human exploration, with astronauts set to live and work on the Moon for extended periods for the first time. To do that safely, we need to understand how the body responds to the extreme conditions of deep space.
“By studying how these worms survive and adapt in space, we can begin to identify the biological mechanisms that will ultimately help protect astronauts during long-duration missions — and bring us one step closer to humans living on the Moon.”
Exeter’s partner, the University of Leicester designed and built the FDSPP hardware, with Voyager Space Technologies managing the mission and launch
Professor Mark Sims, project manager for the Fluorescent Deep Space Petri-Pods project at Leicester, said the venture, which is Leicester’s first major microgravity life sciences project, followed previous work with Etheridge and Exeter.
“We hope this will contribute to our understanding of the microgravity environment, and we’re excited about the potential to further develop the instrument concept in the future,” added Sims.
The use of animals in space science has a long and chequered history dating back nearly eight decades.
Invertebrates – specifically fruit flies – were the first to be used in 1947, followed by a primate, rhesus macaque monkey Albert II in 1949.
Since then, the complement has included apes, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rats, mice, tortoises, frogs, fish, wine flies, mealworms and tardigrades.
However, it was not until 1960, that dogs Belka and Strelka together with a variety of other animal passengers, became the first to survive an orbital trip in outer space when they travelled in the Soviet Sputnik 5. Their predecessors including the most celebrated, Sputnik 2’s canine passenger, Laika, all perished.
Belka and Strelka’s successful return occurred just months before cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human space traveller in April 1961.
Pics (bottom left, clockwise): Petripod, C. elegans nematode worms x2, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft on SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space (phot from NASA)
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