Luis Zea

The Artemis 1 spacecraft is in orbit around the Moon this week, carrying 12,000 varieties of yeast as part of an experiment led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The yeast cells will help scientists answer a critical question in space exploration: How might human bodies fare in the extreme...

A team of researchers led by CU Boulder is sending some unexpected hitchhikers to the moon: Twelve bags filled with baker’s yeast, the same kind of hard-working cells that make bread rise and ferment beer and wine. As early as Friday, a rocket taller than the Statue of Liberty is...

Luis Zea has been chosen to serve on the Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences Research in Space steering committee by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Zea, an assistant research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and BioServe Space Technologies...

The International Space Station has a problem with fungus and mold—and the University of Colorado Boulder has sent new research to space to find solutions. It is living and growing in secret aboard the station, hidden behind panels and inside...

Luis Zea is investigating the possibility of mining metals from asteroids in space using an unlikely agent: bacteria. It may sound like science fiction, but so-called biomining is already a reality on Earth. Now, Zea, and his co-investigator Jesse Colangelo in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Geological Sciences...

A little piece of Colorado is going to the moon. When NASA launches Artemis 1, its first mission to orbit the moon since 1972, experiments from the University of Colorado Boulder will be aboard. The space agency has announced a CU Boulder BioServe Space Technologies project led by Smead Aerospace...

NASA's Space Biology Program has selected 15 grant proposals to award across three appendices released under the Research Opportunities and Space Biology (ROSBio) Omnibus. Thirteen of the awards will simulate microgravity on the ground to characterize how biological systems respond to changes in gravity. One of the remaining two awards...

NASA and SpaceX’s CRS-14 mission with the Dragon spacecraft carrying experiments developed by the University of Colorado Boulder's Bioserve Space Technologies and researchers at the University of Kansas has successfully arrived at the International Space Station. The experiments center on reproductive biology and will study the effects of microgravity on...

CU Boulder research associate Luis Zea working at BioServe Space Technologies. By observing the health of astronauts that travel into space, scientists have learned that microgravity has important effects on the human body, causing substantial changes to our bones and muscles. However, scientists have also found that microgravity has dramatic...