Freeze-dried mouse sperm that spent nine months in space has been used to produce healthy rodent offspring back on Earth, Japanese researchers said this week.
MIAMI—Freeze-dried mouse sperm that spent nine months in space has been used to produce healthy rodent offspring back on Earth, Japanese researchers said this week.
But could the same hold true for humans? And if conception were even possible in space, would babies born in zero gravity develop differently than their Earth-bound counterparts?
As NASA and other global space agencies work furiously on propelling people to Mars by the 2030s, experts say essential questions of survival on the Red Planet are often overlooked.
Rocket scientists have little grasp of how humans would live and breathe on Mars, or if they even could withstand the powerful doses of cosmic radiation they’ d receive on the two- to three-year journey.
A key component to colonizing other planets — as SpaceX chief Elon Musk has vowed to do on Mars — would be having babies, said Kris Lehnhardt, assistant professor in emergency medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
This raises ethical questions about the potential for creating a new race of humans born in deep space or in microgravity.
“If your goal is to eventually be a truly space-faring species then this is an essential area to study, ” he told Agence France-Presse.
“It is a completely unknown area of science.”
Mouse sperm
A study in Monday’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal, was an “interesting first step, ” said Lehnhardt, who was not involved in the research.
Mouse sperm was freeze-dried and sent for nine months to the International Space Station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth.
When the shipment returned, lead researcher Teruhiko Wakayama of the University of Yamanashi found the space sperm had sustained “slightly increased DNA damage, ” after enduring an average daily radiation dose about 100 times stronger than on Earth.
