SpaceX, the company that manufactures and launches billionaire Elon Musk’s spacecraft, will deliver cannabis and coffee plants to the International Space Station in March.
It is a collaboration between SpaceX and a research laboratory in Colorado, USA. Of course, these cannabis plants are not intended for astronauts to “hover” in space but for a real scientific experiment, testing what happens to plants in weightlessness.
Elon Musk smoked marijuana on a radio show – (Image: Internet)
Specifically, 480 plant cell cultures will be sent to space on the SpaceX CRS-20 cargo flight, which will launch to the ISS in March 2020. Then these plant samples will be transferred to the ISS and they will live in a special incubator for 30 days.
A team of astronauts and ground crew will monitor what happens to the tree samples before they are returned to Earth a month later.
After returning to Earth, the scientists will test the samples to see how exposure to micro and space radiation may have altered the plant’s gene expression.
“This is one of the first human studies of the effects of microgravity and space light on cell cultures of cannabis and coffee plants. There is scientific support for the theory that plants in space This is an opportunity to see if these mutations are retained upon return to Earth and if there are new commercial applications.Dr. Jonathan Vaught, co-founder and CEO of Front Range Biosciences, explains the significance of this experiment.
Théo Khoahoc.tv
comments
comments
