These strange organisms are heading to space. What could go wrong?The European Space Agency (ESA), just launched brainless pieces of slime mold to International Space Station in order to study the effects of microgravity on single-celled organisms.French students aged 10-18 years old will have the opportunity to conduct their own space science experiment with help from Thomas Pesquet, a station crew member of ESA.Pesquet will film the behavior of slime molds in microgravity. Two thousand French school students will then compare their results to slime mold controls on Earth.It is not known what it will do in microgravity. What direction will it go? It will take the third dimension, going up, or sideways, according to Pierre Ferrand, an Earth sciences professor and project manager at CNES in France.AdvertisementAdvertisementThese four slime mold samples were among the 8,200 lb crew supplies and science experiments that were sent to the station by Northrop Grumman Cygnus NG-16 on Wednesday.Slime molds are a rare species. Physarum Polycephalum comes in many shapes and sizes. It can also grow large, mushroom-like fruiting bodies that measure several feet in diameter.We still don't know how these slime molds, which are unicellular, can do this. However, it has already shattered the belief that an organism cannot learn without a mind, according to Audrey Dussutour (CRCA), senior researcher at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition, who is currently working on the project. This statement was published by the French state research organisation (CNRS) in April.She said that they can remember and learn, share information with their fellow creatures, and navigate a maze in the same way as animals who appear more advanced.AdvertisementAdvertisementTo see how slime molds reach for food, a camera will be placed on the ISS and observe the four Petri dishes. Their usual strategy is to connect each morsel one by one, but their behavior in microgravity may be slightly different.Students will then compare their results with the control slimes on Earth in order to see how microgravity affects their behavior.Dussutour stated that they hoped to be able send more missions to the ISS in the future, particularly if they show surprising behavior once in space.We will be content for now if they wake up. After all, we don't know how they will respond to weightlessness.AdvertisementAdvertisementREAD MORE: A Blob of slime mold blasts off into space for an extraordinary ISS experiment [Agence France Presse]More about the ISS: Space Station Astronauts Throw Their Own Zero-G Olympic Games
