BioSentinel

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

NASA’s BioSentinel will carry microorganisms to deep space to help scientists better understand the effects of deep space radiation on biological lifeforms.

• NASA’s Artemis I mission is an uncrewed mission, there will be some living passengers on board. BioSentinel, a shoebox-sized CubeSat, will carry microorganisms in the form of yeast into deep space so that scientists can fill critical gaps in the knowledge about the health risks of radiation in deep space.
• The primary objective of BioSentinel is to monitor the vital signs of yeast to see how the microorganism fare when exposed to the radiation of deep space. 
• Yeast cells have biological mechanisms that are similar to human cells, including DNA damage and repair. 
• Due to this, scrutinising yeast in space will help us better understand the risks of space radiation to humans as the space agency plans missions to the Moon and beyond. 
• For this, BioSentinel will study yeast cell growth and metabolic activity after exposure to a high-radiation environment.
• BioSentinel is just one of the Artemis I mission’s ten secondary payloads that will hitch a ride to deep space. 
• All of these satellites are mounted in the Orion stage adapter on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. 
• They will be ejected into space to carry out science and technology investigations in deep space. 
• BioSentinel is the only satellite to carry a life science experiment.
• A key component of BioSentinel’s mission is a novel biosensor. 
• NASA refers to it as a “miniature biotechnology laboratory” that is designed to measure how living yeast cells respond to long-term space radiation exposure. 
• It has a set of microfluidic cars, which allows the controlled flow of extremely small volumes of liquids, to provide a habitat for yeast, along with a way for scientists to observe them in real-time.
• Alongside the biosensor, the BioSentinel will carry a radiation detector instrument which characterises and measures radiation.
• There is an identical set of specimens and instruments at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Silicon Valley. The sets of data from space and the research centre will be compared to measure the yeasts’ response to different gravity and radiation environments.