University of Zurich is in space with an experiment

(CONNECT) Since March 31, 2025, the University of Zurich has been on board the current Fram2 space mission, the first flight in a new orbit over the Earth's poles, which will last around four days. In the weeks leading up to the launch of SpaceX 's Falcon 9 launch vehicle, Cora Thiel prepared cell cultures for the possible launch windows in her laboratory at the Kennedy Space Center.

Thiel, the head scientist at the UZH Space Hub at Dübendorf Airport, and Oliver Ullrich, the head of the UZH Space Hub, hope that the Space Genomics experiment will provide new insights into whether and how humans can live beyond the Earth's gravitational pull. "We are one of the few research projects selected for Fram2 that are not from America," Ullrich is quoted as saying in a UZH report. "And we are the only one from Switzerland."

The experiment was carried out on April 1 by 29-year-old robotics engineer Rabea Rogge, the first German woman in space. She graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and is currently working on her doctorate in Norway. As a member of the Academic Space Initiative Switzerland, she led the development of a satellite mission to low-Earth orbit and robotic ocean missions in the Arctic, according to a NASA statement.

"With Rabea, the UZH research project was in the hands of an astronaut who had her first experience in weightlessness as part of the 6th Swiss Parabolic Flight Campaign of the UZH Space Hub," emphasizes Ullrich. This took place from October 3 to 14, 2022.

None of the four crew members has any professional training for space flights. According to Rogge, one of them does not even have a pilot's license. "It's now about making space flight more accessible instead of seeing it as exclusive. This is the only way we can plan new, even more interesting space missions and push the boundaries." ce/mm