News Archive

29 August 2022
NASA's BioSentinel Mission to Measure Impact of Space Radiation

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) BioSentinel mission is included on NASA's Space Launch System rocket as part of the Artemis I mission that is scheduled to lift off this month. According to NASA, "The primary objective of BioSentinel is to develop a biosensor instrument to detect and measure the impact of space radiation on living organisms over long durations beyond low-Earth Orbit (LEO). . . . BioSentinel will conduct the first study of the biological response to space radiation outside LEO in almost 50 years." In the study, strains of yeast cells will be carried inside a CubeSat spacecraft, weighing approximately 30 pounds. "The BioSentinel biosensor utilizes the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to query the biological response to ambient deep space radiation, including DNA damage like the formation of double strand breaks," NASA said. Read more about the entire Artemis mission here.