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SpaceX Falcon 9 Reusable, hovering in test flight at 1000m

SpaceX has now made five successful rocket landings. Every bit part of the ninth Commercial Resupply Services flight, the SpaceX team recovered a booster from a successful launch Mon — the 2d stage touched down, in accordance with the mission programme, at 12:53 AM EDT. CRS-9 is due at the ISS on Wednesday morning, with a several-ton payload of supplies and experiments in tow. Dragon is likewise bringing an international docking adapter which will brand it easier for future manned missions to dock with the ISS. This includes futurity crewed Dragon flights, as well as the Boeing Starliner. While CRS missions aren't manned (yet!), that doesn't mean today's mission didn't bring any life to the party. This time, in improver to the crew supplies and science hardware, the CRS-ix flying will bring microbes from Chernobyl to the International Infinite Station.

Close-up of SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage, shortly after it touched down on July 18, 2022. Credit: @elonmusk

Close-up of SpaceX's Falcon nine starting time stage, before long afterward it touched downwardly on July xviii, 2022. Credit: @elonmusk

Much of the science payload is equipment to be tested, including a automobile for testing whether nosotros can sequence DNA in microgravity. Information technology's not that nosotros recollect it'due south incommunicable — DNA sequencing only requires electric current, but the fashion we currently do sequencing also relies on Earth's familiar gravity, and so we demand some other method if we're going to do sequencing in infinite. There's as well an experiment chosen OsteoOmics that looks at which genes are transcribed in bone that's been kept in mag-lev weightlessness on Earth versus os cells kept in freefall weightlessness, which is what occurs aboard Station.

NASA also sent up a stage-change heat exchanger that they're alpha testing. Information technology could make heating and cooling in infinite easier by providing thermal inertia. The test build will compare water and wax to see which works improve.  Wax's thermal properties and overclocking potential has actually been explored for apply in smartphones and other technology platforms, though nosotros've all the same to see shipping systems that used the technique.

The fungus comes from locations inside and effectually the Exclusion Zone at Chernobyl. Originally gathered by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as function of a dissimilar experiment, these eight species have been living in culture, and so they aren't themselves radioactive. Just two of the species, Cladosporium sphaerospermum and C. cladosporioides, really seem to accept a taste for radiation. They grow toward it with a decisive preference.

Cladosporium cladosporioides, one of the fungi from Chernobyl. Image: Medmyco via Wikimedia Commons

Cladosporium cladosporioides, one of the fungi from Chernobyl that's heading into infinite. Image: Medmyco via Wikimedia Commons

Clay Wang and colleagues hope the radiophilic microbes volition provide some clue that volition aid humans survive in space. These special-snowflake fungi take many tactics that they employ to soak up and mitigate the dose of radiation they receive, including producing a lot of melanin, which tin scavenge gratuitous radicals from the ambient fluid bath.

While the radiation environment aboard the ISS station is cipher similar the radiocontamination surrounding the ruined nuclear plant, astronauts still experience elevated levels of radiation exposure while they're in space. Wang hopes that the elevated dose will convince these fungi to showtime showing off their repertoire of radiation compensation tricks, explaining to Popular Science, "Microorganisms simply make certain things when they need to. We want to see if they really make new compounds in infinite."

"From an overall perspective, this is merely part of the rich stream of research going on on the space station, from homo inquiry, biological science, physical sciences investigations and things for exploration technology," said Julie Robinson, chief ISS plan scientist, during a briefing Saturday. Falcon ix is due back from the ISS in about a month, and nosotros'll keep yous updated on its adjacent endeavors.