In 2014 microbes collected from our favorite Chicago dinosaur, that would be the Field Museum’s Sue the T-Rex , were launched into space. It was part of an effort to send microbes from all kinds of earth environments into space to see how they grow. The point? To learn how microbes associated with everyday human life react in a closed, limited-gravity environment and what implications this may have for humans during long-term space travel. Now, the results are in. Dr. David Coil, Project MERCCURI researcher and a Project Scientist in the Microbiology Lab of Jonathan Eisen at the University of California at Davis, joins us with details on the experiment.

Exploratory research into the microbiology of human space travel

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Exploratory research into the microbiology of human space travel

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