The work, which was previously published in the journal npj Microgravity, will be highlighted at the 70th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in San Francisco from February 21 to 25, 2026. The effort focuses on enabling more laboratories to carry out microgravity biology experiments that require live cell imaging without relying on a small number of highly specialized, expensive instruments.

"We know that astronauts' cellular signaling processes like insulin signaling are affected by being in zero gravity," said Adam Wollman, an Assistant Professor at Newcastle University. "But no one had tried to look at this in a simple, stripped down system. We wanted to watch a cell sensing and responding to a signal in zero gravity to see exactly what happens."

Microscopes currently used for space research, including systems aboard the International Space Station, are typically custom built, costly instruments that only a limited number of investigators can access. Wollman and colleagues set out to create a more accessible alternative by starting from an open source microscope design developed at Stanford and then modifying it for robustness, lower cost, and easier use in harsh flight environments.

The resulting instrument, named FlightScope, was selected to fly on a European Space Agency parabolic flight campaign, often referred to as the vomit comet. These specially converted aircraft fly repeated steep parabolic trajectories that generate short periods of weightlessness, usually around 20 seconds at a time, interspersed with periods of high acceleration. While this makes parabolic flights an attractive platform for microgravity research, the rapidly changing forces and vibrations pose challenges for sensitive laboratory equipment.

To survive these conditions, the team reinforced the microscope with rigid mechanical mountings and vibration damping components, and they integrated a custom fluid handling system that can quickly switch samples and reagents between successive flight maneuvers. Using yeast cells as a model system, they imaged the uptake of fluorescently labeled glucose during the microgravity phases and reported that glucose uptake appeared slower in weightlessness than under normal gravity.

Wollman and collaborators emphasize that FlightScope is not limited to aircraft based research. The group has already deployed the microscope to the Boulby underground laboratory in an old British salt mine that serves as an analogue environment for the Moon and Mars. In that setting, the microscope supported studies of salt tolerant microorganisms known as archaea, with the goal of better understanding how life might persist in briny, subsurface environments on other worlds.

The team is now developing a new version of FlightScope designed to fly on a sounding rocket. These small rockets reach altitudes of around 80 kilometers before returning to Earth, providing roughly two minutes of microgravity in a single flight. The researchers view this as a stepping stone toward eventually operating similar imaging systems in long duration zero gravity environments.

A clearer picture of how cells behave in space is important for protecting astronaut health and for understanding how microbes that support life support systems will function off Earth. Microorganisms could eventually be used to help produce food, medicines, and other essential materials during long missions or in off world habitats. By lowering the cost and complexity of microgravity compatible microscopy and sharing their design as an open source platform, the FlightScope developers aim to broaden participation in space biology and accelerate the discoveries needed for sustainable human activity beyond Earth.

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