When the Artemis II spaceship carries four astronauts around the moon, it will also bring four miniature proxies of the crew made from their own cells.
Alongside crew commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will fly lab-grown tissue samples designed to mimic parts of the crew’s bodies, particularly bone marrow, a key component of the immune system. The NASA experiment, called AVATAR — short for A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response — aims to show how living human cells respond to deep-space radiation and weightlessness.
Before launch, which could occur as early as March 6, doctors will draw blood from each crew member. Scientists will then grow cells from those samples and place them into chips about the size of a computer thumb drive. During the 10-day mission, the chips will soak up the same radiation and microgravity as their human counterparts.
“This is a small experiment, but it could lead to really big impacts for healthcare, both for our astronauts, but also people here back on the earth,” said Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist.
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