British researchers are sending a compact Petri Pod lab containing 12 one-millimetre Caenorhabditis elegans worm chambers to the International Space Station to study how microgravity, radiation and vacuum affect living organisms and inform human health during long-duration spaceflight.

Led by the University of Exeter and engineered by the University of Leicester with UK Space Agency funding, the project seeks to illuminate how extended spaceflight impacts human health by observing how worms survive and adapt under microgravity, radiation, and isolation.

Beyond worm health via fluorescence and time-lapse imaging, researchers will monitor environmental data—temperature, pressure and radiation dose—and transmit results to Earth for analysis.

Space officials and project leaders emphasize the mission’s potential to inform countermeasures for bone and muscle loss, fluid shifts, vision issues, and radiation risks in humans on long-duration missions to the Moon and beyond.

The Petri Pod provides a self-contained life-sciences platform with controlled air, temperature and nutrients, enabling remote Earth-based monitoring through imaging with fluorescent markers and environmental sensors.

Developed by Exeter and Leicester with UK Space Agency support, the experiment will launch from Kennedy Space Center, operate on the ISS for up to 15 weeks, and transition from the station interior to exterior deployment via a robotic arm.

The miniature space laboratory will be launched to the ISS and deployed to study how biological systems respond to long-duration space travel, using 12 chambers of C. elegans in a compact unit.

Researchers anticipate initial data and images soon after deployment and envision the platform enabling broader biological investigations in space without large-scale infrastructure.

The project aligns with renewed international momentum toward lunar exploration, including NASA’s Artemis program, and aims to inform future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars by developing cost-effective, miniature research tools for space biology.

The experiment, named Fluorescent Deep Space Petri-Pods (FDSPP), will be mounted outside the ISS on a robotic arm after an initial period inside, and will be remotely controlled from Earth with life-support conditions kept stable in each chamber.

The FDSPP project marks Leicester’s first major microgravity life sciences initiative and builds on prior Exeter-Leicester work, with collaboration through Voyager Space Technologies to interface with NASA for ISS deployment.

The Petri Pod unit measures roughly 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters, weighs about 3 kilograms, and houses 12 agar-based chambers with food and water delivery for the worms, with a mission duration up to 15 weeks in space.