Zebrafish ‘Aquanauts’ Are Thriving on China’s Tiangong Space Station!

Launched on April 25 alongside three astronauts aboard the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft, the zebrafish, along with four grams of goldfish algae, embarked on a groundbreaking mission to create a self-sustaining aquatic ecosystem in microgravity. This initiative marks the first vertebrate-raising experiment of its kind in space, as reported by Xinhua.

As per Zheng Weibo, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the CAS, the astronauts have successfully collected water samples twice and replaced the fish food box once. Further, they observed that the zebrafish exhibited unusual directional behaviour, such as inverted swimming and rotary movements, due to the microgravity environment on Tiangong.

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This ambitious project, which operates approximately 400 km above Earth, aims to examine the impact of the space environment on the growth, development, and behaviour of vertebrates, as well as the material cycles of confined ecosystems in space. The research involves analysing samples like water and fish eggs.

The closed-loop system, where algae and fish sustain each other, could significantly influence the design of life support systems for future space habitats. Successfully establishing this self-sustaining aquatic habitat represents a major breakthrough in space-based vertebrate research, paving the way for future studies on the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation on complex organisms.

By observing the zebrafish and analysing the collected samples, scientists hope to gain critical insights into the challenges of maintaining life support systems for long-duration space missions and potential future space settlements. Additionally, this experiment could advance our understanding of human health and disease, as the zebrafish’s responses to space conditions may reveal the effects of microgravity and radiation on biological systems.

 

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