Agnirva Space Premier League - Expedition #31521: How Does Microgravity Affect Yeast? A Student-Led Study from Space

What happens to living cells when gravity disappears? That’s the question students from the Awty International School set out to answer with their NanoRacks experiment on the ISS. Their project focused on yeast cells—simple organisms with complex behavior, ideal for understanding how microgravity influences growth and reproduction.

This investigation allowed students to explore how yeast behaves differently in space compared to Earth. Yeast is often used as a model organism in biology due to its simplicity and similarity to human cells in many cellular processes. In microgravity, fluids don’t settle the same way, and this changes how nutrients are absorbed, how waste is removed, and how cells divide and grow.

By comparing yeast growth on the ISS with control samples on Earth, the students gathered valuable data on cell viability, colony formation, and metabolic activity. These results are not just academically interesting—they could contribute to our understanding of how human cells might behave in long-duration spaceflight, which is vital for future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

This project is a great example of how space education can go beyond textbooks and inspire young minds to explore real scientific questions in the final frontier.

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