Fab City Summit

Space Ecologies: Roscosmoe
The worm that wanted to go into space

A project by Xavier Bailly, Ewen Chardronnet, Špela Petrič and Miha Turšič. The Roscosmoe project is supported by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the M3 laboratory of the Roscoff Biological Station (CNRS-Sorbonne Universities), the Federation - Open Space Makers initiative of CNES, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation and the PING Association (Nantes).

If we want to establish our presence outside our planet, we will not be able to do it with space technologies alone. We will only succeed if we consider space ecologies.

Roscosmoe is an art & science project exploring the notions of spatial ecology and the study of life and evolution of life in terms of conditions of varying gravity. Since humanity has emerged from its omni-gravitational environmental framework, we seek to understand our existence through examples in the non-human environments surrounding us. The most dominant gravitational manifestation in our environment is the tides that occur under the effect of sea level change as a function of lunar cycles. The living entities that inhabit this marginal area between the sea and the land have developed exceptional gravitational strategies that help them survive. In order to understand some of the fundamental conditions of our gravitational existence, the Roscosmoe project takes on board the Symsagitifera roscoffensis, a marine worm, an exceptional animal-plant from the Breton coast, for field research, and in particular towards outer space. atmospheric. S. roscoffensis has capabilities that can be described as "extra-terrestrial": regeneration of organs (including the brain), symbiotic coexistence with algae in its body that provide all its metabolic requirements through photosynthesis, a special gyroscopic organ for navigating high tides. S. roscoffensis also exhibits similar behavior in laboratory environments. Such behavior can be used as a comparative model to observe the influence of the environment on the body. It was not us who chose to send the worm into space, it is the worm that chose us to help him carry out this journey.

The meet-up will address the open hardware development of a module for the study of S. roscoffensis in the International Space Station and a test clinostat (Random Positioning Machine) under development at the Fab Lab Platform C in Nantes in partnership with the Federation - Open Space Makers initiative of the National Center for Space Studies (CNES), the Waag (Netherlands) and the Delak Institute (Slovenia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symsagittifera_roscoffensis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinostat