Brine Shrimp - Space Experiment

Space Experiment

Scientists have taken the eggs of brine shrimp to outer space to test the impact of radiation hazard to life. Brine shrimp cysts were flown on the U.S. Biosatellite II, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 missions, and on the Russian Bion-3 (Cosmos 782), Bion-5 (Cosmos 1129), Foton 10 and Foton 11 flights. Some of the Russian flights carried European Space Agency experiments.

On Apollo 16 and Apollo 17, the cysts traveled to the moon and back. The cosmic ray passed through an egg would be detected on the photographic film in their container. Some eggs were kept on Earth as experimental controls to ensure a fair test. Also, as the take-off in a spacecraft involves a lot of shaking and acceleration, one control group of egg cysts was accelerated to seven times the force of gravity and vibrated mechanically from side to side for several minutes so that they could experience the same violence of a rocket take-off. There were 400 eggs in each experimental group. All the egg cysts from the experiment were then placed in salt water to hatch under optimum conditions. As a result, a high sensitivity to cosmic radiation was observed on Artemia salina eggs; 90% of the embryos, which were induced to develop from hit eggs, died at different developmental stages.

Several Space Shuttle flights carried brine shrimp including STS-37 which had brine shrimp born in space, some of which survived after landing. In 2011, STS-134 carried a middle-school designed experiment containing brine shrimp.

Russian/European flights sometimes used the Artemia franciscana species of brine shrimp, instead of A. salina.