China's Shenzhou-18 crew have 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.
The four zebrafish were brought into orbit by the Shenzhou-18 spaceship on April 26 and are now swimming in a tank containing just a few bottles worth of water in the Tiangong space station's Wentian laboratory module.
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. 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.
The three Shenzhou-18 astronauts, Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu, are responsible for taking water samples and will collect any eggs laid.
"In space, we conducted the country's first in-orbit aquatic ecological research project, that is, raising fish in space. We observed the zebrafish growth in the space station, which have accompanied us for several months. As the mission requires, we have to carry out over 90 experiments and tests, and all of them are progressing smoothly," said Li Guangsu.
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.
The project aims to make a breakthrough in the cultivation of vertebrates in space and help decode more human genetic mysteries, as zebrafish share over 80 percent of genes with humans.
Shenzhou-18 crew share progress on self-sustaining fish ecosystem in space
