The United Kingdom Space Agency is sending hundreds of Caenorhabditis elegans to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year as part of its Molecular Muscle Experiment. Sending the colony of worms is expected to help the scientists learn about muscle loss in space and in turn, could lead to new treatments to muscle conditions on Earth, the agency announced through an official blog.
Astronauts lose up to 40 percent of their muscle after just six months in space. Worms are both structurally and metabolically highly similar to humans and thus, provide a lot of practical advantages for experimentation. C elegans are small, quick to grow, cheap and easy to maintain, making them good to work with.
Recentkly, NASA and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos identified and repaired a minute pressure leak, which resulted in a minor loss of cabin pressure. According to NASA blogs, the International Space Station's cabin pressure is steady after the Expedition 56 crew repaired one of two Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the complex.
"After a morning of investigations, the crew reported that the leak was isolated to a hole about two millimeters in diameter in the orbital compartment, or upper section, of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft attached to the Rassvet module of the Russian segment of the station," the blog read.
However, the cabin crew wasn't in any kind of danger. NASA tweeted, "The @Space_Station crew is conducting troubleshooting and repair work today after the discovery of a tiny leak last night traced to the Russian segment of the orbital complex. All systems are stable and the crew is in no danger."
The Russian space agency Roscosmos has convened a commission to conduct further analysis of the possible reason behind the leak. In the wake of the repair, flight controllers in Houston are continuing to monitor station's cabin pressure.
With inputs from ANI
