{"id":221605,"date":"2014-10-14T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"ea62daaa1ce7ce9797c65afc01b57b2f"},"modified":"2014-10-14T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T22:00:00","slug":"sending-cells-to-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=221605","title":{"rendered":"Sending cells to space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/videos\/2014\/10\/sending_cells_to_space\/14973418-2-eng-GB\/Sending_cells_to_space_small.png\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nYassen Abbas, a young graduate trainee at ESA\u2019s Life, Physical Science and Life Support Laboratory, explains his work to design an experiment for deep space that will investigate the susceptibility of living cells to cosmic radiation. Today\u2019s astronauts orbiting close to Earth are protected from most space radiation by our planet\u2019s atmosphere and magnetic field. In future, astronaut missions are planned to Mars and beyond.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\nBut heading farther out to space would increase crews\u2019 radiation exposure from both solar and cosmic radiation. Concern is greatest around the 1% of cosmic radiation nuclei the size of an iron atom or more \u2013 known as \u2018high-ionising high-energy particles\u2019 or HZE for short \u2013 which can slice right through DNA. The most serious class of damage is termed \u2018double-strand breaks\u2019, leading to loss of genetic information and potentially triggering cancer.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nHowever cells do have an ability to repair double-strand breaks, and the experiment \u2013 intended as a passenger on a future deep space mission, or else a dedicated CubeSat \u2013 would apply fluorescent markers to osteosarcoma cells \u2013 a type of bone cancer \u2013selected because of their rapid growth characteristics. The more cells per sample, the higher the chance of observing a radiation event. The proposed experiment would include a camera to trace the progress of the repair process, returning images to the ground in real time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/videos\/2014\/10\/sending_cells_to_space\/14973418-2-eng-GB\/Sending_cells_to_space_small.png\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nYassen Abbas, a young graduate trainee at ESA\u2019s Life, Physical Science and Life Support Laboratory, explains his work to design an experiment for deep space that will investigate the susceptibility of living cells to cosmic radiation. Today\u2019s astronauts orbiting close to Earth are protected from most space radiation by our planet\u2019s atmosphere and magnetic field. In future, astronaut missions are planned to Mars and beyond.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\nBut heading farther out to space would increase crews\u2019 radiation exposure from both solar and cosmic radiation. Concern is greatest around the 1% of cosmic radiation nuclei the size of an iron atom or more \u2013 known as \u2018high-ionising high-energy particles\u2019 or HZE for short \u2013 which can slice right through DNA. The most serious class of damage is termed \u2018double-strand breaks\u2019, leading to loss of genetic information and potentially triggering cancer.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nHowever cells do have an ability to repair double-strand breaks, and the experiment \u2013 intended as a passenger on a future deep space mission, or else a dedicated CubeSat \u2013 would apply fluorescent markers to osteosarcoma cells \u2013 a type of bone cancer \u2013selected because of their rapid growth characteristics. The more cells per sample, the higher the chance of observing a radiation event. The proposed experiment would include a camera to trace the progress of the repair process, returning images to the ground in real time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}