Dual Dove
Elon Musk made headlines these days after it’s been revealed that astronomers have warned that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the Starlink project could make our planet vulnerable to asteroid impacts.
Asteroid-hunting telescopes would have a much more difficult task due to these satellites.
You may recall that Musk found himself in hot water after smoking weed in public during a radio show.
Now, his company SpaceX seems to have teamed up with a Colorado transport firm in roder to transport cannabis and coffee plants to the ISS in March 2020.
Reasons for this unexpected move
Now, don’t get too excited, because the reasons are not the ones that you might be thinking about. It’s been revealed that the main reason behind all this unconventional space cargo is actually to experiment with the effects of zero gravity on the plants.
You may recall that back in October, the company’s CEO Elon Musk apologized to his employees after smoking weed. The people behind this experiment are hoping to see if the plants will be genetically modified in this environment.
They also plan to see is there is a way to design some more resilient vegetation for the areas that have been severely affected by climate change.
An interesting parentship
It’s been revealed that Front Range Biosciences, which is an agricultural biotech company, has teamed up with the University of Colorado and tech start-up Space Cells.
The main aim of the partnership is to launch more than 480 plant cell cultures in an incubator that has been created specifically for space.
These samples will be reportedly taken aboard the SpaceX CRS-20 cargo flight that is set for March 2020.
It’s also worth noting that this will be one of the first times when the effects of microgravity and spaceflight are tested on hemp and coffee cell cultures.
So now they wanna test plants rather than animals being sent to space now that’s really trivial!