Approaches for Surveying Cosmic Radiation Damage in Large Populations of Arabidopsis thaliana Seeds- an Antarctic Example

CRESS was designed as a secondary payload for the December 2016 high-altitude high-latitude and long-duration balloon flight carrying the Boron And Carbon Cosmic Rays in the Upper Stratosphere (BACCUS) experimental hardware. Investigation of the biological effects of Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) particularly those of ions with High-Z and Energy (HZE) is of interest due to the genomic damage this type of radiation inflicts.

The biological effects of upper-stratospheric mixed radiation above Antarctica (ANT) were sampled using Arabidopsis thaliana seeds and were compared to those resulting from a controlled simulation of GCR at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and to laboratory control seed. The payload developed for Antarctica exposure was broadly designed to 1U CubeSat specifications (10cmx10cmx10cm <1.33kg) maintained 1 atm internal pressure and carried an internal cargo of four seed trays (about 580,000 seeds) and twelve CR-39 Solid-State Nuclear Track Detectors (SSNTDs).