La Trobe University has joined a space mission from Sweden as part of an international collaboration with the German space agency and a Melbourne aerospace engineering firm to explore the role of gravity in health and disease in space and on Earth.
A tiny vial of "flying gut cells" on board the MAPHEUS-15 research rocket, which launched on 11 November, will give scientists a better understanding of how the removal of gravity in long-term space flight affects the body.
This is critical not only for the health of astronauts but could also have implications for medical advances on Earth.
Coordinated by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), MAPHEUS-15 is part of a series of space launches that La Trobe scientists hope could ultimately tell us about the fundamental mechanisms of cell regeneration and cancer.
The gut cells, known by researchers as "Gastronauts", were housed in "mini labs," specially engineered by Melbourne's Enable Aerospace.
These small modules housed tiny temperature-controlled vials of cells with microscopes and cameras so scientists could watch in real time how they reacted to the environment.
The enclosure was designed to keep the biological samples alive, capture images and record data, with robust storage that could survive radiation, launch vibration and other mission environments.
Australia's lead researcher, Professor Patrick Humbert, Director of the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS), said scientists hoped to gain a better understanding of how gravity controlled biological processes, which could be harnessed for new therapeutics on Earth.
"Gravity is the only constant force present throughout evolution. Conducting experiments in space where gravity is absent provides a means to ask how it is involved in the processes of cell regeneration and cancer," Professor Humbert said.
La Trobe scientists will also consider the effect of gravity on the health of astronauts.
"As astronauts continue to spend extended time in microgravity [the weak gravity experienced in orbit] and the space environment, the decline in their health is a growing concern," Professor Humbert said.
"Astronauts experience issues with bone and muscle loss, brain fog, blood production issues and intestinal problems. They are also at higher risk of cancer."
La Trobe Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Industry Engagement Professor Chris Pakes said the research could have far-reaching consequences.
"This mission is an example of the high-impact research that La Trobe University conducts that could have the potential to transform health and wellbeing in space and on Earth."
DLR project lead Professor Thomas Voigtmann said the MAPHEUS-15 mission was the 600th launch from Esrange, the facility run by the Swedish Space Corporation. DLR's Dr Jens Hauslage collaborated with La Trobe scientists for the mission.
"The Gastronaut-01 experiment is the first step towards an intensive scientific collaboration between Germany and Australia in the field of microgravity research on sounding rockets," Dr Hauslage said.
Don Love, Director of Enable Aerospace, said the Gastronaut-01 mission was a fantastic demonstration of cross-discipline collaboration stretching across countries, academia, research organisations and industry.
"Enable Aerospace is proud of the module, which we developed in under three months in support of the mission," he said. "This is the first in a family of modules we are developing that will make it easier to capture high-quality life science results in microgravity onboard sounding rockets like DLR'S MAPHEUS."
The mission was not without drama for the Australian team.
Much of the intestinal cell sample originally intended for the shuttle did not survive the trip to Sweden. LIMS post-graduate researcher Samantha Melrose scrambled to find more from another researcher, coincidentally working with the same cell line at a nearby university.
MAPHEUS 15 reached a record-breaking altitude of 309 kilometres, providing seven minutes of microgravity for its experiments - an increase over the previous six minutes. While this additional minute may not seem like much, it is significant for science research where terrestrial microgravity experiments, like those conducted in drop towers or on parabolic flights, typically offer just a few seconds of 'weightlessness'.
The La Trobe experiments:
Gastronaut-01: La Trobe scientists will study a human intestinal cell line known as Caco2. The human cells will be recorded during pre-flight, launch and the microgravity phase as a precursor for human studies of the gut function and behaviour in microgravity. The cells will be grown on NanoMslides, which are specially designed microscope slides invented by scientists at La Trobe to visualise the cells in colour without any prior staining. Scientists aim to observe and record any changes that occur in the cells.
MiniWeed: Investigation of the influence of gravity on duckweed, a plant species that could be a food source on long-term space missions. This experiment is a collaboration between La Trobe, the University of Adelaide and DLR.
Australia's experiments were among 21 research collaborations on board the shuttle.
MAPHEUS is a high-altitude research program of DLR and stands for "Material Physics Experiments under Microgravity".
Regular flights with high-altitude research rockets have taken place under the program since 2009.
Photo caption: (From left) Geoffrey Cooper, Lead Engineer, Enable Aerospace; Samantha Melrose, PhD student, Humbert Group, La Trobe University; Professor Thomas Voigtmann, Project Manager, MAPHEUS-D, DLR Institute of Materials Physics in Space; Dr Jens Hauslage, Group Leader, Aeromedical FabLab, DLR Institute for Aerospace Medicine; Professor Patrick Humbert, Director, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS), La Trobe University; and Sebastian Feles, Deputy Group Leader, Aeromedical FabLab, DLR Institute for Aerospace Medicine.
