Turkish astronaut continues experiments aboard ISS

The first Turkish space traveller, Alper Gezeravci, is carrying out another scientific research project named VocalCORD aboard the International Space Station, the Turkish Space Agency (TUA) has announced.

The VocalCORD experiment, developed by Istanbul’s Halic University, will try to detect disturbances in the physiology of the respiratory system from frequency changes in the voice with the support of smart watch artificial intelligence and to investigate the effects of low-gravity environments on the human voice on Wednesday.

The Ax-3 mission, with Gezeravci on board, launched late last week from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket of private space company SpaceX, and later docked with the International Space Station, in orbit above Earth.

The four-person team will do more than 30 scientific experiments during their two-week stay, with Gezeravci responsible for 13 of them, or nearly half.

He has already carried out three scientific experiments on his list, Extremophyte, UzMAn and CRISPR-Gem.

Extremophyte

The TUA said the first experiment, named Extremophyte, was developed by Ege University in the Aegean city of Izmir.

The experiment, conducted on Monday, aims to reveal the transcriptome by next generation sequencing in plants grown in space and on earth which are exposed to salt stress, and to compare some physiological and molecular responses of glycophytic and halophytic plants to salt stress in microgravity.

CRISPR-Gem

The other experiment carried out on Tuesday was on CRISPR-Gem gene editing.

It was developed by Türkiye's Yildiz University, seeking to investigate the effectiveness of CRISPR gene editing on plants in a microgravity environment in order to understand and improve the defense mechanisms of plants, which are the skeleton of bioregenerative life support systems meant to provide a sustainable system in long-term space missions, one of the chief hurdles for the future of humanity in space.

UzMAn

He also conducted another experiment, named UzMAn.

It was developed by Istanbul’s Bogazici University, seeking to carry out growth and endurance tests of microalgae species adapted to harsh earthly conditions in a zero-gravity environment, to examine their metabolic changes, determine their carbon dioxide capture performance and oxygen production capabilities, and develop a life support system.