Starship Asterisk*

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Humans have long been fascinated by the cosmos. Ancient cave paintings show that we've been thinking about space for much of the history of our species. The popularity of recent sci-fi movies suggest that the human mind just might be coming to grips with theharsh environment "out there."

The human body is another matter.

When gravity is greatly reduced—as in spaceflight—we no longer use our muscles to resist the usual pull of a planetary mass, and, without additional exercise astronauts lose both bone and muscle. Additionally, studies have shown that other parts of the body change in space like the bend of the spine, the amount of blood in the body and eyesight.

As we are now, prolonged voyages into outer space may be limited by our physical abilities…but a tiny new astronaut could provide much-needed insight into the ways that our bodies behave in microgravity: the noble roundworm.

It may come as a blow to the ego, but roundworms—or Caenorhabditis elegans—share a considerable amount of genetic material with humans. Enough, in fact, to make them the good candidates for a new study designed to determine how low-gravity environments affect astronauts. ...