Bacteria sent into space! SpaceX carries out vital experiment

Elon Musk's space company, SpaceX, sent a four-person crew into space to conduct a new experiment.

The Dragon spacecraft, launched from Florida as part of the Crew -11 mission and destined for the International Space Station, includes a crew of two American astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut.

Among the cargo on board are bacteria harmful to humans, such as salmonella and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which will be studied in space. Scientists have developed an experiment to examine how microgravity affects the growth of certain types of bacteria that cause disease in humans.

For this, researchers will grow different strains of bacteria in microgravity conditions, freeze the samples at minus 80 degrees Celsius and then bring them back to Earth to see how they grow differently from their Earth-grown counterparts.

Scientists have already studied how weightlessness affects the growth of bacteria, and NASA is also conducting research on this topic.

Searching for a way to combat antibiotic resistance

But researchers on this mission to the International Space Station hope to bring back data that will help limit the spread of infectious diseases, or at least help experts find ways to prevent bacteria from developing resistance to antibiotics.

This has been identified as an extremely serious public health problem because some bacteria can no longer be killed by drugs developed for this purpose.