Pills prepare for life outside ISS

Pills sent into space by the University of Adelaide are being prepared to be installed outside the International Space Station (ISS).

The pills are being loaded into Alpha Space's Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) Science Carriers on board the ISS U.S. National Laboratory. They will then be placed outside for six months where they will be exposed to one of the harshest environments known.

In the mission to the ISS, which was launched in February, the experiment is part of the University of Adelaide’s program to discover how exposure to microgravity and space radiation affects the stability of pharmaceutical tablet formulations.

Update: On Sunday 25 April the pills, inside the MISSE Carriers, were loaded onto the MISSE platform outside the ISS. This is the first time that a NASA experiment led by an Australian university has been placed outside the ISS.

Read the full story about the mission and experiments.

Photos: NASA