NASA to send terrestrial life into deep space for the first time in history

The Artemis-1 mission is scheduled to launch in a few days, sending several hundred colonies of terrestrial yeast on a journey through the solar system. They will all be alive and active at launch, and the purpose of the experiment will be to test how long they can survive. The BioSentinel project has a horizon of 18 months, but can be extended if necessary.

Scientists at NASA say it will be the first time Earth life has been so far from its home Earth. The idea is to launch a CubeSat satellite with yeast inside to fly around the sun in a similar orbit to Earth. They would get about the same amount of heat and radiation as Earth’s organisms, but they would have no protection in the form of our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere.

Most of all, scientists are interested in what will happen to yeast DNA, whether its self-reproduction mechanism will withstand the test of open space. It is possible that the results will be an unpleasant discovery, which will permanently put a cross on manned flights to other planets because of the excessive danger to humans. But in this case, NASA has already made sure – Amazon Alexa voice assistant and Snoopy the dog toy will be on board the spacecraft.