When an unmanned moon rocket takes off from Kennedy Space Center next Monday, millions of tiny organisms from the University of B.C. will be on board.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Vancouver Sun, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You may unsubscribe any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc.
means they’ll be bombarded by anywhere from 20 to 50 times the cosmic radiation we experience on Earth.Article content “It’s the first time in 50 years where we’re leaving lower Earth’s orbit with biological material that’s coming back,” says Nislow, clearly excited about the impending launch.Article content
Nislow says only about 10 per cent of the experiments in this kind of research are done in space. The other 90 per cent are done back on Earth, using highly specialized equipment to bombard organisms with elements that mimic cosmic radiation. But there’s nothing quite like the real thing.