Nasa's Artemis I mission will be uncrewed, but it will send living organisms into space.
In addition to sending the Orion capsule around the Moon, the mission will also involve a collection of secondary missions off into space. One of those is BioSentinel, which will carry yeast into deep space, performing the first long-duration biology experiment to be done beyond the location of the International Space Station.
The goal of the Artemis missions is to "prepare humans to travel on increasingly farther and longer-duration missions to destinations like Mars", the organisation said. For this reason, Nasa has decided to focus on studying the effects of space radiation, which has been suspected to damage living cells. Enter BioSentinel.
The shoebox-sized CubeSat is expected to carry microorganisms, in the form of yeast, allowing scientists to observe its evolution and fill critical gaps in knowledge about the health risks in deep space.
“BioSentinel...