VIDEO. Making babies in space? A start-up wants to attempt the first “space in vitro fertilization”

2023-11-16 18:23:27

Climate crisis, nuclear apocalypse, meteor fall… Humanity could need a planet B. “But it must first know how to reproduce in space,” warns a Dutch entrepreneur. Egbert Edelbroek heads the pioneering company Spaceborn United, which works on reproduction and possible births in the partial gravity environment on Mars. The challenges are galactic. The first sexual relations in space seem utopian but the ambitious Dutchman is nevertheless convinced that he will see the birth of a human conceived in space during his lifetime. “If you want to have human colonies … beyond Earth, and if you really want them to be independent, you also have to face the challenge of reproduction. Humanity must therefore become a multi-planetary species,” he says.

Spaceborn United primarily aims to conceive an embryo in space. The company works for ethical reasons first on the reproduction of mice, before considering sending human sperm and eggs far from Earth. With this in mind, she created a disc that mixes the cells together. It’s like a “space station for your cells,” summarizes Aqeel Shamsul, CEO of the British company Frontier Space Technologies, which is collaborating with Spaceborn on the project. The embryo will then be cryogenically frozen to suspend its development and guarantee a safe return in difficult conditions including shaking and gravitational forces. A launch with mouse cells is planned for the end of next year, and it will take at least “five or six years” for the first launch to produce a human embryo, according to Edelbroek.