Maiden Flight

A mated queen bee embodies both the female and male germline (sperm, eggs) for an entire honeybee hive and lays up to 2,000 eggs daily. She is classically surrounded by a retinue of worker bees that sustain her needs as an extension of her own metabolism—providing food, thermal regulation, cleansing, and disposal of her waste. On Earth, the presence of honeybee colonies is key to the survival of a broad network of plant and animal species, including humans.

In space, the exploration of the honeybee germline in extreme environments contributes to the understanding of important future challenges ranging from off-planet pollination to cooperative biological fabrication and material-cycling. Here, the Mediated Matter group examines new relationships between biological and architectural processes of metabolism, embodied by the design of synthetic astro-ecologies to support and study the extraterrestrial flight of the queen honeybee. 

The project explores what behavioral or physiological differences may arise in the queen bee, in light of the extreme forces and unique environmental gradients traversed en voyage; including thermal gradients of 0 to 60°C, gravitational-forces of 0 to 15 G, and vertical velocities up to 1 km/s.  

During the flight, the systems intended to maintain the queens’ metabolic processes were designed to be dynamically shared by retinue bees and human-made monitors: joint regulatory activity, respectively powered on sugar and electricity.

In addition, each module’s compact frame was equipped with high definition video recording (60fps at 1440p). The continuous documentation, embedded with humidity, temperature, and flight data, may help us contextualize the impacts on a queens’ metabolisms, and how designs linking natural and synthetic homeostasis may augment survivability. 

Overall, this project epitomizes the Mediated Matter group’s ethos—design for, with, and by nature—by placing the bee at the center of the design process.

If successful, these spacefaring queens will be reintegrated into hives on Earth, for continued observation of how the forces of space travel may alter queen bee physiology and behavior, as well as structure of the hive, as compared to queens that have only lived on Earth. Over 30 years after the last published precedents for bringing the honeybee to space (NASA 1981 STS-3 and 1984 STS-13), this project may address some of the unanswered questions left by the last voyages. 

This study relates to a body of ongoing Mediated Matter research to explore the concept of metabolism, exemplified in bees and their environment, and drawing from templated and emergent behavior studies, insect biology, robotics, digital fabrication, and computational design. Insights from biological research will inform design and architectural expression, which will in turn push the scientific questions further, and form a creative and self-perpetuating cycle. 

Research Team

Mediated Matter group
Rachel Soo Hoo Smith, Felix Kraemer, Ren Ri, Jean Disset, João Costa, Sunanda Sharma, Christoph Bader, Gabriel Owens-Flores, Miana Smith, Natalia Casas, Kelly Egorova, and Prof. Neri Oxman.

Collaborators
Dr. Noah Wilson-Rich, Dr. Kristian Demary, Aaron Weber, Jessica O’Keefe, and The Best Bees Company

Dr. Michael Simone Finstrom, Garrett Dodds, and the Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research Department at the USDA-ARS

Michael Duchouquette and Zumbido Farms

Julia Wolfenbarger, Jacob Scoccimerra, and NanoRacks LLC

FLIR Systems

Blue Origin 

Acknowledgments and Support:

Media Lab Facilities: Jessica Tsymbal and Kevin Davis. MIT EHS: Lorena Altamirano.

MIT Space Exploration Initiative: Ariel Ekblaw.

MIT Media Lab, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, GETTYLAB.