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The British Space Agency is sending hundreds of Caenorhabditis elegans to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year as part of its molecular muscle experiment. The sending of the worm colony should help scientists know the loss of muscle in space and, in turn, could lead to new treatments for muscle conditions on Earth, the agency said on an official blog.
Astronauts lose up to 40% of their muscles after only six months in space. Worms are both structurally and metabolically very similar to humans and thus offer many practical benefits for experimentation. C elegans are small, quick to grow, cheap and easy to maintain, making them interesting to work with.
Recently, NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, identified and repaired a tiny pressure leak, resulting in a slight loss of pressure in the cabin. According to NASA's blogs, the cabin pressure on the International Space Station is constant after the crew of Expedition 56 repaired one of the two Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the complex.
"After a morning of investigations, the crew reported that the leak had been isolated in a hole about two millimeters in diameter in the orbital compartment or in the upper part of the Soyuz MS-09 probe attached to the Rassvet module. Russian segment station, "the blog read.
However, the cabin crew was not in danger. NASA tweeted, "The @Space_Station team is doing troubleshooting and repair work today after the discovery of a tiny leak last night on the Russian segment of the orbital complex. All systems are stable and the crew is not in danger.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos has convened a commission to further analyze the possible causes of the leak. Following the repairs, the Houston flight controllers continue to monitor the pressure in the cabin.
With the inputs of ANI
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