Its capsule recorded high-quality images despite the low cost of the camera
The team is very satisfied with the objectives achieved
Colegio Nuryana, in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, has worked on the scientific project «Resistance of Artemia salina cysts exposed to stratospheric conditions», with which they took part in the #ServetVI launches last May. The ServetVI videos: Colegio Nuryana.
In our project, we finally set three objectives:
Objective 1: Assess the resistance of Artemia salina cysts in the stratosphere
The first and main one was to assess the resistance of Artemia salina cysts to stratospheric conditions. They were sent up on the probe in a perforated Eppendorf tube, and withstood conditions of 19 hPa of pressure, a relative humidity of 16%, a temperature of -36.5 ºC and different types of radiation and high-energy particles (HZE ions).
Once recovered, the Eppendorf tube was sealed again with glue and we took it to our school. Two days later we put them to hatch, in the Artemia hatchery, under the conditions set out in our protocol. We made two replicates.
They were left for a week and then the count was carried out, which gave results of between 9% in one of the hatcheries and 14% in the other. We had established hatching success at between 53% and 68% when kept in incubation for a week.
From this we can conclude that exposure to these conditions affected their viability; even so, it is extraordinary that some managed to survive such extreme conditions.
As not many replicates were made, the percentages obtained should be taken with caution, but they are useful as preliminary results for later studies.
Surprisingly, the results are similar to those obtained in some of the Apollo missions (16 and 17), which report that only 10% of cysts subjected to HZE ions hatch. (Biomedical Results of Apollo, NASA, 1975). Although those cysts were subjected to space travel, it is clear that animal embryos are very sensitive to this type of cosmic radiation.
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In any case, heavy nuclei of cosmic radiation have been detected above 27,000 metres, so they appear to be the main cause of this drop in the hatching percentage.
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Objective 2 (achieved): transmit the data to the ground by LoRa and view it in Cayenne
The second objective was to transmit the data to the ground by LoRa and view it in Cayenne. This was achieved successfully, and all the data were subsequently collected in a spreadsheet. The last data point was sent from more than 30,000 metres in altitude, which is surprising given such low power consumption and such a small antenna.
Objective 3 (another success): photos of surprising quality
The third objective was to take photos with an ESP32-CAM and make a timelapse, which we also achieved successfully. The quality of the images is surprising, considering that it costs only a few euros.
The final assessment
Overall, we have obtained very interesting results, and we are very pleased to have reached all our objectives. This is how they announced the project on Instagram