PharmaSat

Scheduled to launch tonight as a secondary payload aboard a U. S. Air Force missile is a ten pound nanosatellite called PharmaSat. It's home to yeast cultures, antifungals, and antibiotics. Scientists will use PharmaSat to study how drugs perform in microgravity by monitoring the interactions of the antifungals and antibiotics with the yeast.

Understanding how drugs behave in microgravity, of course, is key if humanity is going to expand into space. So far, the few people who have traveled into Earth orbit and beyond have been carefully monitored for days or weeks before launch, and there have been only isolated instances of sickness in space. As more people venture out and stay longer, however, there will inevitably be illnesses that will require treatment out there. PharmaSat is a step along the way to see what to use in those treatment situations, and how to use it.