University Of Florida Professor To Fly Blue Origin New Shepard On Mission For NASA

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Ferl, a researcher within UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, is also the director of UF's new Astraeus Space Institute. He is joining five other people on the launch of Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard rocket today for what will be its eighth human spaceflight. Dubbed NS-26, the capsule is set for liftoff as early as 9:00 a.m. EDT from Blue Origin's West Texas launch facility.

Along for the ride will be a species of plant called Arabidopsis thaliana. Ferl will be looking at how its genes adapt on the way to space.

"Space is a challenging environment, one that we're not evolutionarily designed for," he said during a phone interview from the launch site. "And so the question is, what tools can we bring to bear to understand how much adaptation, how much physiological change has to occur in order to survive and thrive in space."

Ferl has used the plant on previous experiments on board the International Space Station and the space shuttle .

"It turns out, we know a fair bit about what it's like to be on the space station or on the space shuttle compared to Earth, but we actually know very little about that transition from going from the ground up into space," he said.

"Science just hasn't had that many opportunities to do biology experiments of the kind—that we do on the way or in the first few minutes, or even the first few seconds of getting into space."

The plants are the representative for what terrestrial biology has to go through when it travels off-world.