Astronauts Catch a Dragon
16 January 2015
Earlier this week, astronauts Samantha Cristoforetti and Butch Wilmore captured the Dragon spacecraft as it arrived at the International Space Station carrying fresh supplies and new experiments for the six astronauts.
The pair used a giant robotic arm attached to the outside of the Space Station to capture the spacecraft and hold it in place while they unloaded.
The materials Dragon brought were mostly ingredients for new experiments the astronauts will run, including tiny cells taken from fruit flies, flatworms, shellfish and even humans.
One of the first things to be unloaded was an experiment that requires speedy action from astronauts. When humans are in space their immune systems (that’s the part of our body that protects us against disease) do not work as well as on Earth. To help us understand why this is, researchers have sent human immune cells aboard Dragon.
These cells have been extracted from fresh human blood and they survive only 120 hours once outside it! This means the astronauts have to work very quickly to complete their experiments in time. After a two-day flight on Dragon the cells needed to be placed inside an incubator as soon as possible. The next step is to trigger the cells’ natural anti-disease responses. They will then be frozen ready to be sent back to Earth for further analysis.
The astronauts will also create a fake infection to activate immune cells taken from other life forms, including rats and mussels. They will then study how the cells behave in zero gravity, normal gravity on Earth and man-made gravity in space.
By doing this they are aiming to find out whether the cause of the slowed immune system in space is low gravity or the effect of dangerous cosmic rays – or even a combination of the two!
Cool Fact: The Dragon capsule really does "breathe fire" from the 18 thrusters that are used to steer it!
