Pacific Ocean, January 7th 2020 – The SpaceX-19 Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to earth with a splash down in the Pacific Ocean. The capsule left the ISS under the command of the Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano at 10:05 GMT (11:05 Italian local time) and returned to earth in less than six hours.
The SpaceX-19 mission also returned the scientific samples of the biological experiments ESA ROTIFER B-1 ( University of Namur, Belgium) and ASI XENOGRISS (a team of italian scientists including the students of Istituto Tecnico Industriale “Meucci”,), both developed by Kayser Italia. The samples will be delivered to the investigators in the next days for the final analysis.
ROTIFER B-1 wants to study the overall impact of the spaceflight, including launch effects, microgravity, cosmic radiation and landing shocks on a biological sample in a hydrated state. XENOGRISS studies the behavior of the XENOPUS LAEVIS, a particularly resistant tadpoles , and it will be very important to understand the processes that regulate the human tissues.
On the ISS, ROTIFER B-1 experiment used the ESA KUBIK incubator while XENOGRISS was implemented in a Kayser Italia standard BIOKON container.
The KUBIK incubator (Photo Kayser Italia)
XENOGRISS in the BIOKON container