A human base on the Moon? This is the objective of the American project Artemis which plans to build a permanent and autonomous base by 2040 at its South Pole. To feed its future inhabitants, French researchers propose to take fish eggs to create a farm. Will they be able to withstand take-off aboard a rocket, then weightlessness during the journey to the Moon? When crossing the Earth's atmosphere, living beings are strongly accelerated and feel up to 5 times their weight, i.e. a hypergravity of "5 g" - with g for gravity. They find themselves in space in a "0 g" environment.
To answer these questions, scientists placed 400 sea bass eggs - a farmed fish - at the end of the arms of a rotor that simulates "5 g" hypergravity for 10 minutes. Other eggs were placed in a device simulating microgravity. These simulations took place in early April 2021 on the GEPAM facility of the SIMPA laboratory. Labeled by the European Space Agency in 2020, it is the only specialized platform to study aquatic models that are candidates for space in Europe.