Artemia in space!
Artemia are used to determine the effects of space flights on humans.
Artemia were flown on various missions, such as the Soviet biosatellites Cosmos 782 (Biobloc SF1), Cosmos 1129 (Biobloc 4),
the American Moon missions Apollo 16 and 17, and the Space Shuttle missions STS-37 and STS-43 - just to name a few.
So far this page contains brief information on the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. I hope to be
able to obtain the actual scientific papers, so that I can provide more information on the
rest of the missions.
Travel outside Earth's atmosphere can expose a spacecraft and its occupants to potentially
dangerous regions of radiation. Four experiments flown aboard later Apollo 16 and 17 Moon missions were
designed to assess the degree to which exposure to cosmic ray particle radiation might present
a hazard to astronauts.
The Biostack experiment package: left, external view of container;
right, stack of biological objects in monolayers and physical detectors.
Credit: NASA
The Biostack experiment (see a photo on the right) basically consisted of several layers of
organic-matter (e.g. Artemia salina eggs) and plastic. The plastic was etched later on to determine
high energy heavy ion (cosmic ray - space radiation) impacts. Those tracks were used to determine affected
organic matter, e.g. which Artemia eggs were hit by cosmic rays.
"Only ten percent of the Artemia salina eggs hit [by a cosmic ray heavy ion] developed to a swimming larvae, compared to
90 percent of the ground controls and 45 percent of the non-hit flight controls. The larvae
derived from hit eggs had a high mortality. Only a few reached maturity, and none was completely
normal in further growth and behavior. They never reached the normal 12-mm length and pair
mating was reached retardedly."
