Professor Lewis Dartnell, Professor of Science Communication, was interviewed by BBC Radio 5 Live about the different projects going on in space, one of them being the storage of sperm on the international space station.
Professor Lewis Dartnell explained the project, he said: “The researchers in this case are looking into the potential for preserving sperm in the interests of space travel, of space exploration, and they took some mouse sperm and they have freeze dried it which is the same process you do for, effectively, instant coffee.
“They’ve created some instant sperm and they’ve launched that up to the international space station and then left it there, and this latest paper is the result of five years of exposure to the space environment on the international space station and they’ve brought that instant sperm sample back down to the earth, rehydrated it, mixed with a bit of water like you would with an instant coffee and now have demonstrated they can successfully fertilise mouse eggs which stayed on the ground to produce healthy mouse pups and indeed they showed that the next generation is perfectly healthy as well. So the conclusion from this result is that sperm can be successfully stored in space by freeze drying it for at least five years.”
Listen to the full show on BBC Sounds.
