Chinese scientists have bad news on having babies in space. But there is a silver lining
Researchers use China’s Tianzhou spacecraft missions since 2017 to study how microgravity and space radiation can affect biology
As a team of Chinese scientists has discovered – the outlook is not very positive.
The researchers used two of China’s Tianzhou cargo spacecraft missions to culture and study the differentiation of human reproductive cells in space.
Early-stage human reproductive cells did not grow or develop nearly as well in space as on Earth, the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics and Beijing’s Tsinghua University found.
In space, the success rate of generating the earliest precursor germ cells falls by around half, while early sperm-producing cells multiply over 25 per cent more slowly, according to their findings published in Science Advances on July 15. The outcome was attributed largely to microgravity and cosmic radiation.
The study marks the world’s first successful differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into germ cells in a space environment, according to the paper.