Artemis-I to launch on Aug 29: What is the first biology experiment going to Moon?

Even though there won’t be any people on board when the Artemis-I mission blasts off to the Moon on August 29, there will be a special group of CubeSats there to lay the framework for the crew who will arrive a few years later. The first biological experiment going into lunar orbit is one of the payloads.

Before sending humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars, a group of four studies known as BioExpt-1 would examine the effects of radiation in space. Understanding the impacts of long-distance space travel on the human body can help develop strategies to reduce or eliminate them.

To research the impacts of radiation and how biological systems may adapt and survive in deep space, scientists are sending cellular systems such as fungi and yeast in addition to plant seeds and algae. To determine what all of these biological systems went through throughout the flight, researchers will collect data before and after the flight and analyse the alterations.

The four biological experiments will be divided into two scientific bags and put inside container assemblies, according to NASA. The experiments will travel 60,000 kilometres beyond the Moon before returning to Earth along the path used by the crew module of the Orion spacecraft, which is launched by the Space Launch System.