MELBOURNE, Fla. – When SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday for the International Space Station, it will be carrying some…
MELBOURNE, Fla. – When SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday for the International Space Station, it will be carrying some unusual passengers – actually, 36,000 of them.
Worms. Wriggling, slimy worms in plastic bags.
If you’re curious why NASA, let alone the three astronauts on board the station, would want to fly bags of worms into orbit, it turns out worms are more like people than you might think. How they react in space could be key to figuring out ways to keep humans healthy on long space trips to Mars and beyond.
Spaceflight poses many hazards to people, one of the most prevalent being muscle weakening. In fact, astronauts in space for six months or longer can lose up to 40 percent of their muscle mass.
Worms too have muscles, and scientists from around the world want to see what happens to them in orbit. Scientists from Exeter, Nottingham and Lancaster universities partnered with the United Kingdom Space Agency and other teams around the world to work on the Molecular Muscle Experiment. Countries represented by other teams include the U. S., Japan, South Korea and Greece.
“(Worms) are genetically very similar to people,” Tim Etheridge, principal investigator on the project and senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, said. “Their muscles look very similar. They’re structured almost identically; their molecular makeup and the way they metabolize is similar with people.”
The worms are practical, too: Since they’re only about 0.
