Its Biosentinel mission will launch aboard Artemis I.
Artemis I will see SLS launch NASA's Orion spacecraft around the Moon and back. It will also launch 10 small CubeSats into space, carrying a number of scientific experiments. One of these, the BioSentinel mission CubeSat, will carry live yeast cells into an orbit around the sun. Sensors inside the CubeSat will allow scientists to study how space radiation affects yeast cells over time.It will be the first-ever deep space biology experiment.
"BioSentinel is the first of its kind," Matthew Napoli, BioSentinel project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, said in NASA's statement. "It will carry living organisms farther into space than ever before. That's really cool!"Yeast cells bear striking similarities to living human cells, and both have similar biological mechanisms, including DNA damage and repair. Both organisms also carry genetic information in double strands of DNA.
This means NASA's long-duration experiment will allow NASA's scientists to study some potential effects on humans of long-term space radiation exposure. Earth's magnetic field protects us from space radiation, but future missions to the Moon and Mars will expose humans to high-energy particles for long periods of time.
So the yeast cells will serve as a stand-in for human cells, allowing NASA to start investigating ways to mitigate the effects of space radiation. The yeast cells will begin the experiment dry, encased in small cards aboard the BioSentinel CubeSat. As the Artemis I mission makes its way towards the Moon, it will eject BioSentinel towards its deep space orbit around the sun.
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