In the coming years, the first babies born outside our planet may be born.
Place of birth: space. How do you like this mark in your passport? Scientists from the Netherlands promise that women will be able to give birth in space by 2031. The researchers shared their plans at the first scientific congress of Asgardia in Germany (Asgardia is a state created in space).
“If humanity wants to become a multi-planetary species, we need to learn how to reproduce in space,” says Dr. Egbert Edelbrook, founder of SpaceBorn United.
There is no need to carry a baby, flying above the ground for all 9 months. Dr. Edelbrook plans to send pregnant women into space for 24-36 hours during contractions. True, there is a risk that a woman will give birth even before take off – from excitement. Therefore, scientists are planning to send a group of pregnant women into space.
“We will have about 30 participants,” the scientist said. “At any time they can refuse to fly.” Maybe in any, but during takeoff, you can hardly say: “Stop, I’ll get off.”
“Planning everything, of course, will be very difficult,” says the doctor. – It’s difficult to plan a natural process like childbirth. But contractions in space can be stimulated, as they do in IVF clinics every day. “
True, not everyone can become a mother of a space baby.
This should be a woman who has had two births already and they went flawlessly. It is also important that she has a high natural resistance to radiation.
According to the scientist, while childbirth in space is possible only in low Earth orbit (160-2000 km from the Earth’s surface). But no risk for mom and baby.
However, whether it will be possible to arrange childbirth in space in the next 12 years will depend on the funding and development of space tourism.
“If this sector develops in the same way as it does now, if there are comfortable spaceships, then wealthy people will be able to give birth in space,” says the scientist.
But will the process itself be easier? The doctor did not say that. By the way, NASA scientists conducted an experiment on pregnant rats in 1997. Some rodents gave birth after exposure to microgravity, while others under normal conditions. Both of them successfully gave birth, but the rats after microgravity experienced twice as many contractions.
Meanwhile, Russian scientists are also planning to arrange childbirth in space.
“We have always been the first in space and would like the first person to be born in space to be a citizen of Russia,” she said. Irina Ogneva, Head of the Cell Biophysics Laboratory of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “But we should not put patriotic populism at the forefront, but concern for a person. The main thing is not the fact that he was born, but that he was born healthy. And in this sense, we are certainly competitive ”.
By the way, it was on the Soviet space station “Mir” in 1990 that a quail chick hatched from an egg, the first one born in space. In 2014, Russian scientists sent Drosophila flies into space on the Foton-M biosatellite. During the flight, three new generations of insects turned out.