to witness the historic final launch of the Endeavour space shuttle.
Following days of delays and numerous technical issues, Endeavour was finally ready to ferry six astronauts to the International Space Station. During their 16-day trip, the NASA researchers will drop off a $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which has been designed to study the formation of the Universe and search for evidence of dark matter and antimatter.
But there are also some other passengers on the shuttle, who might not receive the same media attention, sew-on patches and victory parades. Alongside the all-male crew of mission STS-134, six types of microorganism and a bobtail squid will strap in their seat belts and head into space.
The five microorganisms will blast off on behalf of The Planetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), which will see if living organisms can make the trip into space, handle some zero-g exposure and take in a little low-Earth orbit radiation.
The experiment would investigate the transpermia hypothesis — which suggests life on Earth may have been seeded by meteorites ripped off the surface of other planets like Venus or Mars. Whether the microbes can survive the ordeal would go a long way toward proving or debunking the controversial theory.
But there are also some other passengers on the shuttle, who might not receive the same media attention, sew-on patches and victory parades. Alongside the all-male crew of mission STS-134, six types of microorganism and a bobtail squid will strap in their seat belts and head into space.
The five microorganisms will blast off on behalf of The Planetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), which will see if living organisms can make the trip into space, handle some zero-g exposure and take in a little low-Earth orbit radiation.
The experiment would investigate the transpermia hypothesis — which suggests life on Earth may have been seeded by meteorites ripped off the surface of other planets like Venus or Mars. Whether the microbes can survive the ordeal would go a long way toward proving or debunking the controversial theory.
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