Sunday Supplement: A giant leap for tiny water fleas
When Daphnia became the first spacefaring animals from UK waters
Hello, Gardeners of the Galaxy, and welcome to the GotG Sunday Supplement, premium content for my top Rocket Boosters!
It's the last day of British Science Week, a 10-day (!) celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). The theme for 2024 is 'Time', because time is key to so many discoveries in science, technology, engineering and maths. Evolution looks at how plants and animals changed over long periods of time, the Earth’s movements show us why we have seasons and different time zones and lifecycles are all about how organisms grow and die during their time on our planet.
Or off the planet. So I thought I would step into my time machine and travel back to when some very special British passengers made their way into space. Now this one isn't plant-related, but as the latest GotG episode focuses on space ecology, and there are more and more astrobotany experiments exploring the interaction of plants with other species in space, I think we can turn our attention to an animal just this once!
And it's a special story for me because it involves my alma mater and a familiar place.
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