Science Cheerleaders Sending Pro Sport Microbes into Space
Microbes from the sweat mop at the Sacramento Kings game, more from the players bench at the San Antonio Spurs game and even some from the Orlando Magic game.
“Somebody’s sweat is going to go up into space,” said David Coil a UC Davis Scientist.
48 samples in all from NFL, NBA and historic sites will be heading into space Sunday March 16 on NASA’s Spacex’s 3rd Dragon Spacecraft.
“That experiment is to see how bacteria grows in space compared to how they grow on earth,” said Coil.
This experiment started by the Science Cheerleaders, a group of current and former NFL and NBA cheerleaders who are also pursuing a charier in science and math started a year ago collecting swabs from stadiums across the United States.
“So from each place that we visit we will send one microbe into space. We are going to do an exact duplicate on earth at the same time and we will see how the growth of some of these microbes is different on the space station than on earth,” said Coil.
Scientist will learn about how gravity plays a role in Bacteria growth, and how it could effect long term missions to Mars. The real lesson is more about getting people interested in science especially girls.
“That its really cool for girls to see that you can be both beautiful and athletic and personable and super smart, and I think the Science Cheerleaders provide that for the girls,” said Jenna Lang a UC Davis scientist involved in this study.
UC Davis assisted in this experiment, once the launch starts people will be able to struck the growth of the microbes on line at spacemicrobs.org you can see if the microbes from your favorite team the San Francisco 49ers or the Kings are growing faster and performing better than teams like the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Lakers.