Experiment launching from Space Coast to study muscle loss in space

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — An out of this world mission may help University of Florida researchers understand why adults lose muscle strength as we age.

The experiment will be inside the rocket scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.

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Researchers said the lab for the experiment is about the size of a shoe box. Inside is human tissue in chip form.

“We’ve actually created them as a three-dimensional muscle,” Dr. Siobhan Malany with UF Health said.

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In space, astronauts experience extreme muscle weakness. Those same muscle changes happen to people on Earth as we age, but it happens at a much slower pace. So, researchers said, if you’re in the business of studying age-related incidences, the best place to do it is in space.

The researchers will study how those muscle chips decline at that sped-up pace in space. The data collected in orbit will then return to Central Florida and help in the development of new therapies for age-related muscle loss on Earth.