---
title: "NASA Is About to Send the First Living Organisms Into Solar Orbit"
description: "Next year, NASA will launch a small spacecraft that will carry yeast cells into orbit around the Sun. Scientists hope to study how radiation affects DNA."
date: "2019-05-22"
modified: "2019-05-22"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-solar-orbit"
categories:
  - "Energy"
  - "NASA"
  - "Renewable Energy"
  - "Science & Energy"
  - "Solar Power"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "NASA"
  - "space"
  - "the digest"
---

# NASA Is About to Send the First Living Organisms Into Solar Orbit

![Next year, NASA will launch a small spacecraft that will carry yeast cells into orbit around the Sun. Scientists hope to study how radiation affects DNA.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/nasa-solar-orbit.png>)
*\<em\>Image: NASA\</em\>*

## Bread Box

For the first time, NASA is about to send living things beyond the reach of Earth's orbit.

A year from now, a small spacecraft [called BioSentinel](<https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/biosentinel_fact_sheet-16apr2019_508.pdf>) will shuttle living yeast into orbit around the Sun, [according to *Space.com*](<https://www.space.com/nasa-deep-space-radiation-mission-biosentinel.html>). This will be the farthest that an earthly lifeform has traveled from Earth since the Apollo mission to the Moon — and scientists hope the trip will reveal how prolonged exposure to solar radiation affects DNA so that they can prepare for [extended human trips](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-future-giant-space-colonies>) into space.

## Final Frontier

BioSentinel is expected to spend up to a year orbiting the Sun, during which NASA scientists will monitor the yeast and compare it to another sample that will be kept on the International Space Station, per *Space.com*.

"This is new territory," NASA astrophysicist Kimberly Ennico Smith told *Space.com*, going on to say that she hopes to see more of these experiments out of NASA in the near future. We're still a long way off from migrating out into the cosmos, but studies like these could help lay the groundwork.

**READ MORE:** [In 2020, NASA Will Send Living Things to Deep Space for First Time Since Apollo](<https://www.space.com/nasa-deep-space-radiation-mission-biosentinel.html>) \[*Space.com*\]

**More on space travel:** *[People Are Roasting Jeff Bezos' Ridiculous Space Habitats](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeff-bezos-ridiculous-space-habitats>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)