The number of projects that will integrate the mission is impressive Artemisof the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA for its acronym in English). Humanity will travel to the Moon again, but this time it will be to settle and develop research that is productive for life on Earth.
Among the multiple projects is that of Luis Zea, a space bioengineer which promotes a study that aims to combat cancer. The Guatemalan scientist offered an interview to El País, in which he also told details about NASA’s plans on the Moon.
“We cannot go to the Moon and Mars to consume all the resources like on Earth,” he told the journalist. Javier Salasof The country. That simple statement by Luis Zea is an example that NASA, apart from the projects that it is going to develop on the surface of our natural satellite, the most important thing is that it will establish the guidelines for how humanity should behave, if we were to emigrate. of our world due to some adverse circumstance.
The American space agency wants to establish a base on the Moon to work on research that helps us understand the depths of the cosmos, from a different perspective. But he also wants to take advantage of lunar conditions to experiment.
That of Luis Zea and his work team is one of those experiments. In the same interview with El País he says that he sent “12,000 mutant yeasts around the Moon” with the intention of discovering if in the absence of gravity, a gene is activated that helps combat the mutations that generate cancer.
Researchers are using yeast as a model to study the effects of microgravity on living things. Yeasts are simple and easy organisms to grow, and they are relatively cheap to study.
In years of research and analysis they have discovered that yeasts grow differently under these environments. For example, yeast can grow faster or slower, and can produce different types of proteins.
They believe that studies on yeast in microgravity can help us understand how microgravity affects living things.