Meet the team: SCAMPI

Institutions: Ecole Polytechnique, ISAE Supaero, Utrecht University, University of Arizona, The Spring Institute for Forests on the Moon

Team: Tarek Ben Slimane, Patrick Grove, Pietro Menichelli, Costanza Torchia, Alvaro Ropero, Jordan Carrico, Louis Sylvestre, Guillaume Soulier, Thomas Jegat, Samuel Evain, Amine El Amami, Mathis Buriasco

The SCAMPI Team is composed of graduate and undergraduate students from around Europe and across the globe. This multidisciplinary team includes varied interests and expertise from space ecology to microgravity fluid physics and innovating optical sensor technology. With the SCAMPI Project, the team hopes to validate that Earth ecosystems function nominally in microgravity. To accomplish this, the team will fly an aquarium containing shrimps to the International Space Station and will observe the impact of microgravity on ecosystem dynamics and the microbial community.

Previous research on the effects of space on living beings has focused on individual organisms. SCAMPI will be one of the first experiments to look at the comprehensive effects of space on an entire ecosystem comprising multiple levels in the food chain. Their model ecosystem is based on the “Ecosphere”, a self-sustaining micro-aquarium modelled after the ecosystems found in brackish water pools connected to the ocean in Hawaii. The aquarium payload will contain saltwater, crustaceans (including shrimp and other microinvertebrates), macro and microalgae, and many microbes. The researchers will monitor the Ecosphere remotely and collect data on the biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) factors inside the system to understand how microgravity interacts with each. They will also develop a mathematical model of the Ecosphere to predict its behaviour.

The SCAMPI project is expected to launch in 2025 as part of the ESA Academy Experiments programme. The data collected from this experiment will help scientists design future closed ecological life support systems for long-duration space missions.

Follow the team’s updates at their webpage here: https://thespringinstitute.com/scampi/