Carousel Space Station: A Concept Spacecraft Testing the Immunological Effects of Long Duration Space Flight.
Michael Le Page
PhD Candidate (Predoctoral)
The University of Western Australia
The adaptive immune system of mammals is undeveloped at birth, and young mammals are
largely dependent on maternal factors until they can develop their own immune system in
response to environmental antigens. The hygiene hypothesis states that a diversity of
antigenic stimuli is critical in early life: excessively sterile living environments may
lead to autoimmune disease. When humankind begins living and reproducing in space, plant
and animal life may be cultivated for the recycling of waste, water and air, but
additionally to provide an environment rich in a diversity of antigens. In short,
humankind may need to take a small part of the Earth with them in order to stay healthy.
Carousel space station is an unmanned, modular vessel concept designed firstly to test the
mammalian requirement for antigenic stimulus, and secondly to determine the extent to
which a small space ecosystem can be self-sufficient. Small enough to be launched in the
payload bay of a Falcon 9 rocket, multiple small modules hang out from a central spinning
gyroscopic motor in order to simulate gravity. Two colonies of mice serve as test
subjects: The first is kept in conditions equivalent to laboratory mice, provided with
stored food, mechanically filtered water and air. The second occupies the majority of the
vessel, has access to stored food, and is exposed to a self- sustaining ecosystem of
plant, animal and microbial life. The multi-year experiment concludes with an immune
challenge of the two colonies with a heretofore-unseen mouse pathogen with known effects:
their responses will be compared through attrition rate, animal weight and activity
measures. The construction, launch, and observation of this craft will provide information
invaluable for the design of the next generation of space habitats.
Presented at ISDC 2011 - Huntsville.
Paper and presentation charts are not available.