Startups challenge gravity to explore the commercial boundaries of space | Science

In a cramped office, hidden in the poorly lit corridors of a shopping mall in Israel, is the equivalent of NASA's mission control in Houston.

However, there are no rows of scientists and flight controllers wearing earphones, all their faces fixed on a large screen representing a spaceship. And no astronaut tells them that he has a problem.

Instead, three large computer screens display a world map showing a satellite, about the size of a large shoebox, orbiting the globe. It is one of many autonomous private "space laboratories" that perform experiments for paying customers, including pharmaceutical companies, universities and chemical companies.

It is the new frontier of space exploration and research. Huge and slow government agencies, such as NASA, no longer have a monopoly. The sector has been commercialized, giving way to major aerospace companies, including SpaceX and Boeing, but also to young, courageous startups with increasingly lower access to the sky.

The one in Israel, SpacePharma, is trying to exploit an emerging space industry: microgravity experimentation.

It essentially provides the ability to perform tests in a situation that is currently impossible to replicate on the planet – an environment with zero gravity or very close to gravity. And without gravity, an inescapable constant that has always restricted each experience, a new field of science is promising.

"In the space, everything is different," said Yair Glick, director of research and development at SpacePharma. Almost nothing – chemicals, plants and even human cells – behave in the same way in microgravity as they are on Earth.

Even the simplest experiment produces new results: "If we mix the water with oil, we know that the water drops and the oil falls. Not so much in space, "Glick said.

National space agencies have been conducting microgravity research for decades, often on the effects of astronaut muscles and bones, but also on how it affects other elements, such as flames – do not twinkle up but form a ball.

The results were amazing. An experiment conducted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency focused on the proteins badociated with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which mainly affects young boys and leaves them motionless.

Proteins, constitutive elements of cells, crystallize differently in space; they are freed from the attraction of the Earth and form in a more orderly way. The researchers were able to register their new structure and make drugs that significantly delay the effects of the disease. Its creators claim that it could potentially double the life of patients and keep them up to 25 years instead of 12.

Rich Godwin heads the American company Space Technology Holding, which relies on research conducted in the space and applies it to the real market. Microgravity commercial testing is a potentially huge market, he thinks, and expects further success in privatization. "It does not change chemistry. Physics is changing, "he said. "It's like the invention of the microscope."

Yossi Yamin, Managing Director and founder of SpacePharma, estimates that there are about 30 private companies selling microgravity experiments.

There are three main ways to do it. The first can be done on Earth by renting a plane and diving in parabolic flight, simulating weightlessness. But the process is extremely imprecise and only lasts a few seconds.

Instead, most companies lease a 250-mile space on the International Space Station, which acts as a real estate agent for the low Earth orbit. They build small automated labs that are sent to a rocket, often when the astronauts are delivered, and are connected to the wall. In these, liquids can be heated, cooled and tiny automatic pumps allow customers to mix chemicals.

SpacePharma also provides roaming satellites that gravitate around the Earth independently. His first was sent on an Indian rocket in 2017.

In the small office of Herzliya, a city that is the technological center of Israel, nanosatellites are handcrafted, in a laboratory equipped with a plastic 3D printer and a welding table. "If you have standalone mobile units, you can control and control from your mobile," said Yamin, who worked for the Israeli army's fleet of satellites for 25 years.

Each satellite costs around £ 2.4m but has enough space for 12 customers, whose experiences can run simultaneously, greatly reducing costs. The commercial space research sector is about half a billion, he said. But he is banking on a market boom.

Pharmaceutical companies plan to create more effective drugs in the space than those manufactured on Earth. Once these more perfect proteins are formed, they can be used as "seeds" to be duplicated on Earth. "These are masterpieces created in orbit," Yamin said.

According to industry experts, the next step in the field of microgravity will be that of "space factories" in which materials that can only be made in space are made.

Twyman Clements, general manager of Space Tango, an American company that launched its launches last year and has conducted 88 experiments in space, including one commissioned by Budweiser on barley and another that examined the reaction of cannabis in space. But now he's starting to make products in space and bring them back.

"It's not just research. Its application is scalable, "said Clements, who grew up on a Kentucky farm and made his own rockets. "We are looking at high value products made in microgravity for the Earth," he said. Their price must be high because sending equipment up and down is very expensive.

Some customers are already looking to manufacture fiber optic cables, which are more effective when they are manufactured in the space. And another product that could be made in orbit are retinal implants to restore vision, made from light-activated proteins that do not form well on Earth under their own weight. Space Tango is looking for solutions to make them in space.

"Next steps are production," said Clements. "It has not happened yet. Retinal impacts could be the first ones. "

This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world's most difficult problems. What should we cover? Write to us at [email protected]