The first operational commercial crew mission will not only bring astronauts International Space Station Also start some unique science experiments to work on the crew.
The Crew Dragon Capsule, carrying four astronauts on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission, is expected to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday evening (Saturday 14), and You can watch the coverage live on Space.com or NASA TV. The cruisers on the six-month flight include NASA astronauts Shannon Waker, Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins, and Japanese astronaut Sochi Noguchi.
Some experiments that Crew-1 The astronauts will include microbe-feeding rocks, tests of key parts for future spacesuits, and a student genetics project. Below is a partial list of mission experiments.
Live updates: SpaceX’s Crew-1 astronaut launches for NASA
Food Physiology: Floating around for several months can change the immune system of a spacefly. Food physiology The experiment will therefore test how orbiting astronauts change their diet, along with their daring “microbiome” (microbe composition), to alter or enhance their immune function. The overall goal of the experiment is to improve the spaceflight diet and crew health. The study is ongoing, and Crew-1 will bring the hardware back for more work. During the Crew-1 mission, Glover is scheduled to collect biological samples of his body as a participant in the experiment.
Genes in Space-7: This was a student experiment by Finsom Samson and UG Wang at Troy High School in Troy, Michigan. One of the winning selections from the genus in the space competition For students in grades 7 to 12, the pair will study how brain function changes during a spaceflight, with the goal of helping astronauts, astronauts, work better on long-term missions to space stations, the moon and other deep space.
Surf and spacesuit: NASA, known as the Exploration Extravascular Mobility Unit (XEMU), is looking ahead to its previous lunar space suite. Unlike the NASA EMU currently used for spacewalks outside the orbital laboratory, the spacecraft’s new platform will use water evaporation to remove heat from the astronaut’s body and maintain a safe temperature during the spacewalk. The main element of this system is the spacesuit water membrane evaporator, which is already in front of the station and will be tested on the simulated spacewalk during the crew-1 mission by the spacesuit evaporation rejection flight experiment. The probe will simulate 25 simulated eight-hour spacewalks to see how well the clothing and techno well work in this space.
In the photo: SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station
Plant Housing-02: ISS is gaining a name for its various orbiting gardens, and Crew-1 will add to previous research with lettuce, flowers and other plants. Radish seeds were delivered to the station by a recent commercial response mission from Northrop Grumans’ Cygnus spacecraft, and astronauts will grow them. Plant Housing-02 Experiment inside Advanced plant accommodation. Future crews on long-term missions will use the plants for part of their diet and the roots will be especially useful due to their nutritious nature and ability to grow fast. Radish is also similar Arabidopsis, A plant that has often been studied in microgravity.
Biosteroids: The astronauts on the space station will keep an eye on the microbes that can interact with the rocks, as part of which Biosteroids The experiment, which will launch in December on the SpaceX cargo mission. Potential future uses of this research could include the construction of life-support systems that use regolith (the dusty soil of the moon and small worlds), or the breaking of rocks to the ground. Minerals from plants or rocks for use. The hope is that there will be more use of materials on the moon, Mars or other places, to help create less resources from Earth to save future crews in transportation costs.
Tissue chips: This unique biological experiment places human cells on a thumb-sized 3D matrix, creating a type of small, artificial organ that mimics organ functions. This Tissue chips in space The experiment (which will also fly on a Dec. 2 SpaceX cargo flight) will examine how human cells react and adapt to drugs, stress and genetic changes during a spaceflight. Crew-1 astronauts will study cells from the human lung, bone marrow, muscle and other organs. One key question investigators hope to address is how humans lose muscle mass in space after a few weeks or months in microgravity.
Main heart: The other organ affected by the spaceflight is the heart, where it is Cardinal Heart The experiment, which will also be delivered next month, will come in. Investigators will use engineered (artificial) heart tissue mounted on tissue chips to better understand cardiovascular risk before a spaceflight and build stronger resistance to heart conditions. This research is likely to benefit not only flying astronauts, but also individuals on Earth at risk of cardiac disease.
Improvement: The story was updated at 4:45 p.m. to note that the crew-1 team already has the SERFE spacesuit experiment on the waiting ISS, and biosteroids, tissue chips and cardinal heart experiments will be launched to the crew on a separate cargo. December ship.
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