Beautiful fly
Not long after a new crew of astronauts arrived, China’s Tiangong space station has welcomed another group of new visitors: fruit flies.
If Space.com According to reports, the critters – consisting of 15 adults and 40 pupae – took a ride aboard the recent Tianzhou 8 resupply mission, which successfully connected to the orbital outpost on November 15.
Now the flies will be used to study the biological effects of life outside the pull of Earth’s gravity – and beyond the reach of its magnetic field.
“This submagnetic fruit fly experiment in space primarily aims to study the molecular mechanisms of fruit flies in microgravity and submagnetic environments, as well as their movement characteristics and whether there are changes in their biological rhythms,” said Zheng Weibo. , said a researcher from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics Chinese central televisionas quoted by Space.com.
Field day
As Zheng explains, “magnetic fields have a significant impact on living things” – which is an understatement.
Earth’s magnetic field protects us from dangerous cosmic rays and other forms of radiation hurtling through space—not to mention the dangerous outbursts from our sun. Without this, it is unlikely that life on this piece of rock could have survived for long. (Counterintuitive: When the magnetosphere nearly collapsed half a billion years ago, it seemed to spur a huge increase in biodiversity.)
However, in deep space there will be no magnetic field to protect human explorers. That could cause problems.
Since the Tiangong is parked in low Earth orbit, where Earth’s magnetic field is still protective, the researchers designed a “submagnetic environment in the space station, while this time also preserving Earth’s magnetic field environment to comparison,” Zheng said. .
Egg carton
But why fruit flies? The insects have been a favorite in biomedical and genetic research for a century, and for good reason.
For example, we now know that fruit flies have more genetically in common with us humans than was once thought. We have also completely mapped their genome.
Practically speaking, fruit flies have a short life cycle of just two weeks, and females lay hundreds of eggs at a time. They are also a lot easier to care for than mammalian alternatives like lab rats.
Presumably the fact that they are small creatures also makes them much more convenient to send into space. In fact, the International Space Station once had an entire mini lab – and we mean mini – dedicated to fruit fly research, although it’s currently back on solid ground.
“We also plan to send mice to the space station in the future to conduct in-depth studies on their nervous systems, bones, muscles, immunity and other important areas,” Zhang said in a statement in October.
More about space: Experts are concerned that the destruction of the space station will damage the Earth’s environment
