It sounds like a cheesy comic book come-on, but you can actually have your very own sea monkeys whose parents were born in space - thanks to the commercial spin-off of an unusual research experiment undertaken by former residents of Biosphere 2.
This week, two miniature ecosystems, designed by Biosphere 2 crew members Jayne Poynter and Taber MacCallum, landed safely on terra firma aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, after four months on the Russian Space Station Mir.
The Autonomous Biological Systems (ABS) are 7-inch by 4-inch Lexan cylinders of water illuminated by a fluorescent bulb. Inside are plants and small invertebrates, including snails, daphnia, ostracods, and amphipods, which are a relative of brine shrimp, more commonly known as sea monkeys.
"The point of this was to see if we can use mini-biospheres as a tool to conduct research in space," said MacCallum, president of the Paragon Space Development Corporation he co-founded with Poynter after they left Biosphere 2 in 1993.
"For all we knew, everything could have come back dead," he said.
The ecosystems not only survived in the microgravity of the space station, they thrived and multiplied.
"We saw lots of offspring," MacCallum said. "The algae looks clumpy though. It has an odd texture. The tests aren't near completion though."
Last spring, the ABS units flew on board the Space Shuttle Endeavor for 10 days. Replicas of the space flight systems containing descendants of the animals that traveled and bred on that mission went on sale last week for US$500. MacCallum said proceeds from these limited edition replicas will help fund Paragon's research, which has no NASA backing. So far, only one of the miniature water worlds has been sold.
"Education was the reason we got into this," MacCallum said. "These things bring home the fundamentals of the way the earth we live in works. When considering these ecosystems, children always ask important questions like, 'Are the animals pissing in the water they're living in?'"
