LifeSat: A Satellite for Space Biological Research

The LifeSat Program addresses the need for continuing access by biological scientists to space experimentation by accommodating a wide range of experiments involving animals and plants for durations up to 60 days in an unmanned satellite. The program will encourage interdisciplinary and international cooperation at both the agency and scientist levels, and will provide a recoverable, reusable facility for low cost missions addressing key scientific issues that can only be answered by space experimentation. It will provide opportunities for research in gravitational biology and on the effects of cosmic radiation on life systems. The scientific aspects of LifeSat addressed in this paper are drawn from the science documents prepared by the Radiation Biology Working Group and the LifeSat Science Working Group, an international working group with scientific representatives from the Canadian Space Agency (NRCC), the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Space Agency (DLR), the Japanese Space Agency (NASDA), the French Space Agency (CNES), and the United States Space Agency (NASA).