After traveling aboard a Chinese research satellite for the better part of the last two weeks, a batch of mouse embryos has reportedly begun showing signs of early-stage development in a microgravity environment.
According to China’s state-run media outlet CCTV, roughly 600 of the more than 6,000 embryos sent to space on April 6 have been under constant surveillance, with a high-resolution camera capturing and transmitting photographs of the sample every four hours. After just 80 hours spent in space, the photographs showed the embryos developing from a two-cell stage — an early embryonic stage — to a more notable cell differentiation stage called blastocyst.
China’s reported development is incredibly intriguing in two different ways. First, the successful initial growth of the mouse embryos marks the first time in history that mammalian embryos have been developed in a microgravity environment — i.e., outer space. Additionally, the development of the embryos showed marked similarities to the development of such cells taking place on Earth, albeit in an extremely short amount of time. In other words, it’s still entirely unclear if the embryos will, in fact, grow properly enough to produce fully functioning live mice.
“The human race may still have a long way to go before we can colonize space, but before that, we have to figure out whether it is possible for us to survive and reproduce in the outer space environment like we do on Earth,” the experiment’s principal researcher, Duan Enkui, tells China Daily. “Now, we finally proved that the most crucial step in our reproduction — the early embryo development — is possible in outer space.”
The scientists will now study the continued development of the embryos on Earth after the embryo-carrying capsule returned late Monday afternoon. Now that the embryos have reached the blastocyst stage, the researchers have frozen the cells to prevent any additional development. The frozen cells will now be shipped to Beijing, where their development will continue alongside several Earth-developed embryos. Enkui did point out that, in the future, the team could possibly keep the cells in space for a few days longer in hopes of producing an actual space-born mouse.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.