By 
October 1st, 2024
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Crew members of China’s Shenzhou-18 mission are now wrapping up their stay on the country’s space station. The trio of space travelers slated to return to Earth later this month.
Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu were sent to the orbital outpost on April 25 for a six-month assignment.
Crew member and commander Ye has become the first Chinese astronaut to chalk up 340 days in Earth orbit. Ye is a veteran astronaut who was part of the Shenzhou-13 mission in 2021.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Self-sustaining ecosystem
As noted by China Central Television (CCTV), the Shenzhou-18 crew has been carefully watching a small aquarium of fish in a novel experiment aboard the country’s space station that the astronauts said is going smoothly.
Four zebrafish are contained in a water-filled tank in the Tiangong space station’s Wentian laboratory module.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Using a plant called hornwort, the tank forms a miniaturized self-sustaining ecosystem. The hornwort conducts photosynthesis with LED light, sustaining the lives of the fish.
Genetic mysteries
Scientists on Earth designed the experiment to study how the space environment affects their growth and system balance, and they expressed hope that the fish may even lay eggs, CCTV reports.
The experiment is the country’s first in-orbit aquatic ecological research project, performed in cooperation with the Institute of Hydrobiology and the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
The aim of the project is cultivation of vertebrates in space to help decode more human genetic mysteries, as zebrafish share over 80 percent of genes with humans.
For a video showcasing the station’s current crew, go to:
Posted in Space News
