Why SpaceX purposefully carried bacteria causing diarrhea and fever to the International Space Station

SpaceX has launched some pretty horrible bacteria onto the International Space Station - but all for good reason.

On Friday (August 1), NASA and SpaceX joined forces to launch Crew 11 to the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month mission.

The four-person mission - comprising one astronaut each from Japan and Russia and two from NASA - blasted off into space on the Elon Musk-owned company's Dragon capsule, launching on a Falcon 9 rocket at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

It arrived safely after a 16-hour flight, docking with the ISS on the Saturday morning.

And as part of the joint venture, the mission is carrying disease-causing bacteria to help researchers understand how such bacteria behave and adapt in microgravity environments.

An experiment, conducted in partnership with the US company Space Tango and led by Sheba Medical Center in Israel, will investigate how bacteria behave differently under microgravity.

Crew 11 launched on August 1 (Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images)

Bacteria sent up includes E. coli — which is responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of stomach illnesses each year in the US — as well as Salmonella bongori and Salmonella typhimurium, both of which are linked to foodborne illness.

The samples were contained in a custom-built payload optimized for long-duration exposure and precise temperature control.

Not only does this ensure they reach the ISS in the perfect condition, but it also minimizes the risk of any spillages.

You really would not want to be stuck aboard the ISS with all that going on.

Researchers will analyze how space conditions impact these illnesses - and it might even give us better insight into they work here on Earth.

This includes the potential to deepen scientists' understanding of antibiotic resistance - where bacteria mutate and become resistant to treatments that were once effective.

E-coli was among the bacteria sent up to the ISS (Thomas Leach/Science Photo Library)

Resistance poses one of the most serious threats to modern medicine, making once-manageable infections harder - and sometimes impossible - to treat. Learning how space influences this process could shape future drug development.

After growth under microgravity, the bacteria will be stabilized, frozen at -80°C and returned to Earth for 'molecular and transcriptional analysis and direct comparison to bacteria grown simultaneously in an identical lab setup on Earth,' ARC space lab explains.

Prof. Ohad Gal-Mor, Head of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory at Sheba, said: “We know that space conditions affect bacterial behavior, including how they grow, express genes, and acquire traits like antibiotic resistance or virulence.

"This experiment will allow us, for the first time, to systematically and molecularly map how the genetic expression profile of several pathogenic bacteria changes in space.

"The insights we gain will augment our understanding of infectious disease risks in space travel, and also expand our knowledge of gene regulation and bacterial physiology in general.”

It's not the first time bacteria has been studied in space, with NASA's Genomic Enumeration of Antibiotic Resistance in Space (GEARS) having first launched on the ISS last year.