Category Archives: Space Travel

In Brief While studying the effects of space on a species of regenerating flatworm, scientists noticed that one of the subjects ended up growing two heads. Space travel is hypothesized to have facilitated this aberration. Space Hydra

The International Space Station (ISS) is an invaluable tool that helps us understand how our Earth-based technologies and biology operates in space. It has been confirmed that space travel does indeed impact human biology, even down to the genetic level. Even so, researchers looking into how a species of flatworms fare in space were not prepared forwhat they found.

To the great shock of the team, one of the fifteen amputated planarian flatworms that spent five weeks aboard the ISS ended up growing back two heads once back on Earth. These findings have been published in the journal Regeneration.

Planarian flatworms have remarkable regeneration abilities. They are able to regenerate complex body systems even from a tiny piece of their bodies. After their all-inclusive stay upon the ISS, the worms were brought back to Earth and observed for an additional 20 months. During this time, researchers noticed that one of the worms was regenerating its head, along with another. The scientists then amputated the two heads and the worm once again grew back two heads.

They may not have been able to pinpoint the exact changes that allowed for this phenomenon to occur, but the scientists had never seen this happen in eighteen years of studying these worms. This lead the team to hypothesize that space travel is what caused the change.

With humanity gearing up to launch the first humans to Mars, discovering how biology changes as a result of space travel is of the utmost importance. As humans continue to spend longer periods of time in space, we need to know what to expect so we can prepare for these changes or maybe even take steps to prevent them.

One possible implication of these findings is that once we figure out the mechanisms of space travel that triggered this change, we may be able to harness them to achieve desired results, like giving humans the ability to regenerate, for example. As the paper notes, it could be used to trigger desired morphological, neurological, physiological, and bacteriomic changes for various regenerative and bioengineering applications.

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Scientists Hypothesize That Space Travel Caused This Worm To Grow Two Heads - Futurism

Thursday June 15, 2017

Biologists at Tufts University in Massachusetts sent a bunch of flatworms to space for five weeks just to see what would happen, and were taken aback by the results.

"This one worm, due to its space travel experience, the cells got confused, and grew a head at the posterior end," biologist Michael Levin, co-author of the study, told As It Happens host Carol Off.

The researchers sent a group of planarian flatworms some amputated and some whole to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX commercial resupply vessel on Jan. 10, 2015, to find out how the experience would affect their regenerative abilities.

One of the dissected worms came back with an extra pair of googly eyes.

"We were extremely surprised," Levin said. "It's quite a change to their normal regenerative pattern, so we knew something important had happened to it up in space."

While flatworms are known for the ability to re-growtheir heads and tails,the spontaneous generation a second head is so rare it's almost unheardof. Under normal circumstances, the worm would have simply generated a new tail.

Levin says he's seen two-headed worms before. In fact, he's made some in his lab. But it's not something that occurs naturally.

"So we knew it was possible," he said. "We had no idea this would happen from space travel."

The change appears to be permanent. The scientists have since cut off both the creature's heads, andit grew them both back.

The flatworms lived on the International Space Station for five weeks inside sealed tubes filled with water and air. (NASA)

"As it turns out, the two-headedness is just the tip of the iceberg, because we also found out that these worms were different with respect to their microbiomes, their behaviour, and so on," he said.

When the wormsreturned to Earth, scientists took them out of their five-week-old water and put them in apetri dish with fresh water.

The worms went into "water shock,"curling up and refusing to move for about two hours something that would normally only happen if they'd been placed in an unfamiliar solution.

"So something happened to that water in space, which they obviously got used to," Levin said.

They also got over their natural fear of light.

Levin's team observed the space worms in their lab 20 months after they returned toEarth,comparing their bodies and behaviours to a group of worms that never left the planet.

When exposed to light in the petri dish, the space worms did not seek out darker corners, asother worms did.

"So their behaviour had changed and enabled them to spend more time in the light, Levin said.

When transferred to a petri dish of fresh water after returning from a five-week space voyage, these flatworms curled up and wouldn't move. (Junji Morokuma/Allen Discovery Center, Tufts University)

"This we measured about a year and a half after the worms had come back. So they had already been in our lab, eating the same foods and living in the same environment as the Earth-bound controls for well over a year, and still their behaviour was still altered."

The worms had also changed on a fundamental, biological level.

"We found out that even a year-and-a-half later, the complement of bacteria and the profile of different bacterial species that live in these worms is now quite a bit different between the ones that had been to space and the ones that had been left behind," Levin said.

It's not entirely clear what caused these changes, but there are numerous possibilities.

"I mean these worms have been through basically the space travel experience, and the space travel experience is not one thing," Levin said, noting they expected changes in vibrations, thegravitational field, the geomagnetic field and more.

While it would be unwise to compare worms to astronauts so far, Christ Hadfield has not grown any new limbs that we know of the results of the study could shed some light on how space travel affects us on a cellular level, Levin said.

What's more, the team's findings could have implications a little closer to home.

"Part of the importance of these kinds of experiments is not just for space travel, but for learning about how physical factors like geomagnetic fields, like gravitational forces and so on, how these affect cell behaviours," Levin said.

"We may be able to exploit those for regenerative medicine applications here on Earth."

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Regeneration.

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Scientists 'extremely surprised' after flatworm grows 2nd head in space - CBC.ca

LOS ANGELES -

Weve figured out how to put a man on the moon, but a sandwich in space is another story.

Back in 1965, NASA astronauts snuck a corned beef sandwich into the pocket of a spacesuit. That was the first and probably last time a sandwich orbited the planet.

For the most part, astronauts aboard the International Space Station eat dehydrated space food, but Bake In Space wants to change that. The German-based company has developed a dough that creates crumbless bread, plus several oven designs, and its a potential game changer.

Founder Sebastian Marcu told New Scientist, As space tourism takes off and people spend more time in space, we need to allow bread to be made from scratch.

The ovens will be tested on the International Space Station next year. So get ready astronauts, you may soon be washing down a sandwich with your Tang.

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Company creating bread for space travel - FOX 13 News, Tampa Bay

Come the end of June, KFCs Zinger chicken sandwich will truly be in rare air.

Stratospheric exploration company World View announced Tuesday it plans to carry the chicken chains sandwich during the first extended duration development flight of its high-altitude Stratollite. In other words: KFCs chicken sandwich is headed to space, or at least to the stratosphere, some 60,00080,000 feet above Earths surface.

Were excited to be the ones pushing spicy, crispy chicken sandwich space travel forward, says Kevin Hochman, KFC U.S. president, in a statement. But in all seriousness, were proud to support World Views commitment to advancing space research and trust them to take our world famous Zinger sandwich to space.

The launch window opens June 21 and the flight will be broadcast live. KFC even has an entire website dedicated to the experience.

One of World Views ultimate goals is to send passengers on five- to six-hour flights on a system called Voyager. Tickets are currently selling for $75,000, with a target date of sometime in 2017.

But for now, the company will forge ahead with KFCs Zinger in the drivers seat.

The Stratollite is spearheading a new market for data collection of our planet, the environment and human activity from a perch at the very edge of space, says Jane Poynter, World View founder and CEO, in a statement. This next mission will be our first attempt to really push the envelope with a flight designed to test, for the very first time, all the integrated critical systems needed to bring this Stratollite online for commercial markets.

KFC unveiled the Zinger spicy chicken sandwich to U.S. audiences April 24. Already a hit in more than 120 countries (Australia alone sells more than 22 million Zingers each year), the brand is banking on big things.

If exposure was the roadblock, this trip into the unknown should do it.

KFC and creative agency Wieden+Kennedy approached World View about the idea. World View says it saw the opportunity as a chance to demonstrate its technology to a mass audience, while simultaneously financing a portion of the vehicles development program. Thus, the World View and KFC partnership was born, aiming to usher in a new era of stratospheric discovery and chicken sandwich space exploration.

Stratollites have the capability of carrying a wide variety of commercial payloads, the company says. Everything from sensors to telescopes to communications arrays. This could help scientists identify and track severe weather, provide WiFi, and assist first responders during natural disasters.

Previous test flight have lasted just 612 hours in length. This KFC journey is scheduled for four days. The solar-powered balloons, according to the company, can fly up to 28.5 miles above the planet.

The Stratollite was created to deliver more routine and meaningful access to space for all, and this mission allows us to give edge-of-space access to a commercial customer that would previously deem a project like this unimaginable, says Taber MacCallum, World View co-founder and chief technology officer, in a statement. Sure, this whole chicken sandwich payload is a bit funny. But, KFC gets to embark upon a one-of-a-kind marketing experiment, while we get to pursue our first multi-day shakedown cruise in the stratosphere. Its a win for all. Were pleased to have the opportunity to creatively bridge the divide between our industry and global brands that carry a more mainstream audience.

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KFC's Zinger Sandwich Prepares for Space Travel - QSR magazine (press release) (registration)

In BriefA company funded by NASA is proposing the development and useof fusion rockets, which are propelled by the same nuclearprocesses that power stars. Nuclear Powered Rockets

Princeton Satellite Systems, which is funded by NASA, has announced the possibility of fusion reactor rockets which could according to the companys president Michael Paluszekenable new and exciting science missions that are too expensive and difficult to do with todays technology. Such missions could include propelling spaceships towards planets and stars, exploring space deeper than we ever have before, and deflecting asteroids.

Fusion rockets are propelled by the same nuclear processes that power stars. They can produce more energy and do so more efficiently than traditionalchemical propellant or ion drive designs. Princeton Satellite Systems design uses nuclear fusion by heating a mix of deuterium and helium-3 with low-frequency radio waves, then harnessesthe energy produced with magnetic fields. This technique confinesthe resulting plasma in a ring. As theplasma spirals out of the ring, it can be directed towards the blasters.

While this system would prove expensive for bigger projects (around $20 billion), the smaller rocket estimated to be 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) in diameter and 4 to 8 meters (13 to 26 feet) long would only cost about$20million per generator; ten times cheaper than the larger model.

Cost aside, there are still two other significantobstacles:first, the system would emit so much radiation that it would preclude the propulsion of any spacecraft with humans aboard, and second, while one generator may only cost the relatively small sum of $20 million, each ship would have to contain multiple generators to ensure both the stability of the plasma, andto make them capable of achieving thespeeds the rockets aspire to.

Space travel has become a trend among the worlds tech elite, with many big names intechnology working to develop canny ways explore the final frontier further,ideallyby sending humans into outer space to guide those expeditions.

Paul Allen recently revealed the worlds largest plane, which aims to take spacecraft to the atmosphere, thereby reducing the amount of energy required to launch spacecraft from Earth.

Elon Musk has had a series of successful test runs for reusable rockets, including the Dragon spacecrafts second landing at the International Space Station. He plans to test the Falcon Heavy rocket, designed totake people to the moon,in the next few months.

Related to one of the fission rockets goals of transporting robots to make observations of never-before seen parts of the galaxy is NASAs mission to touch the sun with its Parker Solar Probe. The probe will investigate solar wind and gather more data on our closest star thanweve ever had before.

Gaining a deeper understanding ofand visiting space has never been closer in our reach.Ideas like these are endlessly exciting and may be a sign that we may beentering the golden age of space travel.

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NASA-Funded Company Wants to Redefine Space Travel With ... - Futurism

Taboo for some and trendy for others, the real heart of the Butcher's Block's exotic meats list may actually be marinated more in tradition than any sort of novelty.

I have a vivid childhood memory of absolutely badgering my mother for green eggs and ham. It's hard to tell whether it was due to an emerging taste for the exotic or the firm insistence of Sam I Am, but I can be sure of one thing: the dish was far better in concept than it was in execution. Later in life, during my time in Cambodia, I once ordered an omelet and received a mound of rice topped with what I assumed to be chicken breast. All I can say is I'm certain there was something more foul than chicken on my plate.

Perhaps all of this uncertainty and intrigue is meant to demonstrate why I recently found myself in the Butcher's Block, discussing which meat between kangaroo, camel, antelope or alpaca was most flavor-forward and different from the standard fare of beef, poultry or pork.

"Its interesting that theyre not that much different," David Schell, owner of Butcher's Block, later said over the phone." Its what we create in our minds that puts these things in our heads."

Whether it's because of globalization or an understanding of the similar anatomies between animals of all types, Schell said the strange is no longer strange. When your nation bills itself as a melting pot, there will inevitably be an intermingling of cultures and culinary infusions.

"I think the bigger hurdle is whether you eat meat or not," Schell said. "Once you understand youre OK with eating animal protein, its just another way to make a creative meal for your family."

Schell pointed to our region and how many within a 30 mile radius of Bloomington wouldn't think twice about eating venison because of the prevalence of hunting in southern Indiana. Eating wild game such as deer, duck or rabbit may seem strange to others even within the state, but hunting what's close in proximity is something that's been going on since the beginning of time.

"The United States is so unique, for better or worse, in how we view food. Its all about what somebody is familiar with," Schell said. "You leave the bubble of the Midwest and your perspective opens up. Its just amazing what that can do to somebodys tastes and views in general."

Having recently traveled to Mexico, Schell said he saw cricket tacos as well as crickets in salt and lime at a resort. Whereas other cultures have readily accepted insects as a sustainable and alternative protein, Schell said our nation is only recently adopting such a diet.

Though, more progressive cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, have been quicker to accept bugs into their diets. You can now get a basket of toasted grasshoppers to go with your Cracker Jacks when you visit the Mariner's Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington.

Butcher's Block has entertained the idea of insect protein, Schell said, but there are some exotics the store won't touch.

"We do draw a line at some point," Schell said. "There are certain species we wont carry because weve had too much resistance with the offerings that would be available."

While the venison listing often prompts jokes about Bambi, don't expect to hear any jokes about Rover or Whiskers. For now, you'll have to travel to find any dog, cat or horse meat.

At an average of $20 per pound of ground exotic meat, the culinary adventures you go on should still be less than the cost of a plane ticket to Peru or Cambodia. For those that have grown up eating camel or wild boar, a return to culinary tradition can transcend both time and space.

Butcher's Block employee Rob Dicks said the ground exotics the store typically keeps on hand tend to offer flavor profiles comparable to ground beef. He sold me on ground, farm-raised alpaca sourced from Minnesota and cooked over an open grill in the style of a Greek kofta, which is a sort of kebab that typically uses a mixture of lamb and beef. The recipe was a good fit, since the Peruvian staple falls somewhere between lamb and beef with a hint of sweetness.

I'll probably never look back to my mother's green eggs and ham or the Cambodian mystery meat I dutifully ate with any sort of fondness, but I do know that what you eat today may set up your palate for tomorrow.

Schell said one of his first exposures to an exotic meat occurred when he spent several months in Leone, France, where a lot of specially prepared dishes in the region include organs. Because he didn't speak French, he accidentally ordered what he now believes to be veal heart, and it was experience that opened his mind to trying new things.

"When I started getting into food that was plated, that was kind of an eye opener," Schell said. "There is value in things that have no value to someone else in the world."

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Exotic meats a substitute for time and space travel - The Herald-Times (subscription)

When hes not hanging out in the Ziff Davis office guesting on our premier talk show The Convo or talking about Star Trek captains, everyones favorite charming astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson shares his knowledge of the universe with the masses. Whether its on his radio show StarTalk or his Cosmos TV reboot, if you want to know about space, hes your guy.

But what if you dont watch TV or listen to the radio? What if you want to learn about star stuff but all you do is play video games? At E3, we got a solution. Neil deGrasse Tyson is Kickstarting a video game about space exploration.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Presents Space Odyssey is a downloadable game for PC and Mac, and the campaign makes it sound a more modest take on No Mans Sky combined with Tysons knowledge of the actual, real universe. Players begin on Proxima b, a real planet discovered in 2016 thats 4.2 light years away and the closest known exoplanet to the Solar System. From there Tysons voice answers questions and guides players of all ages to the surfaces of other planets and moons, creating an online community of astronomy enthusiasts. Theres also a world-building mod component. Hopefully the in-game currency isnt too egregious.

The other force behind Space Odyssey is a kind of proprietary physics engine. Apparently, Tyson is giving input to make the physics as realistic, educational, and accurate as possible. The 3D language and scripting can create real-time physics puzzles, too.

If you want to hop onboard Neil deGrasse Tysons Space Odyssey check out more details on the Kickstarter page. The target is $314,159 and theres a month and a half left to go. Weve got a crowdfunding campaign over here.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson is Kickstarting a Space Travel Video Game - Geek

The double-headed worm from space. Look for the googly eyes.(Credit: Junji Morokuma/Tufts University)

Researchers have been sending animals to space for decades, and the growing roster includeseverything from dogs andmonkeys to scorpions and jellyfish. But a morerecent animal space traveler returned to Earth with something never before seen: an extra head.

The newly bi-cranial creature is a flatworm of the speciesDugesia japonica, one of 15 flown above the International Space Station for five weeks by Tufts University researchers. The flatworms were cut in half before being launched to study their unique regenerative abilities. Severing a flatworm usually just results in two identical flatworms, but something appears to have gone awry in one individual, who returned with another head where his tail should have been.

This behavior has been observed before in the species, but its exceedingly rare the Tufts researchers say theyve never seen it happen before, evenafter 18 years of working with a colony that now contains over 15,000 flatworms. Even more intriguing, the mutantflatworm kept on making two-headed copies of itself as it further divided, indicating that it wasnt a freak mutation but a true change in the invertebrates physiological makeup.

The 14 other flatworms that experienced the unique stresses of outer space experienced fundamental changes as well, although none so noticeable. The researchers observed them for 20 months after their return and found changes in their behavior when exposed to light and in the content of their microbiomes as compared to control flatworms kept on Earth.

In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Regeneration,the researchers propose that the absence of both gravitational and magnetic fields in space could have something to do with the dramatic transformation. Previous research into flatworms has indicated that Earths magnetic field influences how the basic structure of their cells grows, and the microgravity aboard the ISS could be affectingeverything from gene expression to how ion channels within their bodies communicate. These effects likely extend beyond flatworms as well, making research into their space travel side effects highly informative for future human missions.

We already know that astronauts experience significant physical changes when in space: bones and muscles atrophy, eyesight can falter, blood thins and the sense of taste is diminished. Long-term issues could include vision impairment, heart disease and more, although further study is still needed. Ongoing tests of astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year in space, and his twin brother who remained on Earth could reveal additional long-term effects of space travel.

The researchers hope that the flatworm experiment marks only the first of many such research projects. Because they were unable to control for every variable, such as temperature differences during the flight and the stresses of takeoff and landing, they plan to conduct further experiments to pin down the exact mechanisms that affect flatworm physiology in space. In addition, their two-headed worm represents a sample size of just one. To truly scientifically validate their finding, theyll need to replicate their results.

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Flatworm Travels to Space With One Head, Comes Back With Two - Discover Magazine (blog)

LOS ANGELES -

Weve figured out how to put a man on the moon, but a sandwich in space is another story.

Back in 1965, NASA astronauts snuck a corned beef sandwich into the pocket of a spacesuit. That was the first and probably last time a sandwich orbited the planet.

For the most part, astronauts aboard the International Space Station eat dehydrated space food, but Bake In Space wants to change that. The German-based company has developed a dough that creates crumbless bread, plus several oven designs, and its a potential game changer.

Founder Sebastian Marcu told New Scientist, As space tourism takes off and people spend more time in space, we need to allow bread to be made from scratch.

The ovens will be tested on the International Space Station next year. So get ready astronauts, you may soon be washing down a sandwich with your Tang.

Visit link:

Company creating bread for space travel - FOX 46 Charlotte

Meet the two-headed flatworm from space (Credit: Junji Morokuma, Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University)

The Two Headed Worm From Space! It certainly sounds like a good pulpy science fiction story from the 1950s, but in fact, when researchers from Tufts university sent a bunch of flatworms up to the International Space Station (ISS), that's exactly what they wound up with.

On January 10 2015, the researchers sealed up bunch of planarian flatworms (D. japonica) in tubes filled with half water and half air and launched them up to the ISS on a SpaceX resupply mission. What's more, half of the flatworms had parts of their body sliced off. That's not usually a problem for D. japonica, as it has the remarkable ability to regenerate its body in the face of such an event, which is why it's so often studied.

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Meanwhile, another group of worms received the same treatment but were left here on Earth.

The results of the study are going to be published in the journal Regeneration tomorrow.

The worms were kept in space for five weeks and then returned for analysis. The most striking finding was that one of the amputated worms grew back a head at each end. What's more, when those heads were sliced off, the worm was able to regenerate each again, showing that its physiology had been permanently changed. "In more than 18 person-years of maintaining a colony of D. japonica that involves more than 15,000 control worms in just the last five years alone, the Tufts researchers have never observed a spontaneous occurrence of double-headedness," says a Tufts report about the research.

In addition to finding the double-headed mutation, the researchers also found that the space worms underwent spontaneous fission in which they split their bodies up to create two or more identical worms. This did not happen with the worms that stayed at home. Furthermore, the astronaut worms (astroworms?) also had a strange reaction to fresh spring water when researchers placed them in it, unlike the worms that stayed behind. They became partially paralyzed, immobile and curled up in their petri dishes before returning to normal in about two hours.

The point of the study was to see if the worms' regeneration patterns were altered while in space, and to see if such findings might have applications to humans as we increasingly set our sights on living and traveling in space.

"As humans transition toward becoming a space-faring species, it is important that we deduce the impact of spaceflight on regenerative health for the sake of medicine and the future of space laboratory research," said Junji Morokuma, first author on the paper.

The researchers are quick to point out though, that the study has a few issues including its small sample size. For one, the worms that stayed on Earth didn't experience exactly the same temperature and pressure fluctuations as the worms that rocketed to the ISS, so it's hard to say what exactly caused the changes. Also, the amputated worms had the procedure done here on Earth and the researchers feel that a space-based slicing would provide them even more information and keep the experiment purer. They plan to correct for these issues in future experiments.

This work joins previous studies carried out at Tufts in which flatworms were engineered to grow the heads of other species and induced to grow two heads by altering their bioelectric currents.

Source: Tufts University

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Space travel leads to two-headed worm - New Atlas