Yeast is the ideal organism for this mission because of its spaceflight heritage, well-characterized genetic tools, and its capacity to survive long period space radiation.

Most Importantly, yeast’s DNA damage repair processes are highly similar to that of humans.

The biosensor contains two genetically engineered yeast strains: a wild type strain that serves as a control for yeast health and “normal” DNA damage repair, and a rad51 deletion strain, which is defective for DNA damage repair.

The BioSentinel mission was selected as one of the secondary payloads, to fly on the first launch of the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis I mission

The primary objective of BioSentinel is to develop a biosensor instrument to detect and measure the impact of space radiation...