China just launched a bunch of fake human embryos into space on a new research mission– www.scientificamerican.com

China just launched fake human embryos to its space station for a new research mission

By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron

A clutch of artificial human embryos on China’s Tiangong space station could help researchers better understand whether human pregnancies in space are possible and safe.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences says the experiment marks the first study on human artificial embryos in space. The artificial embryos are actually structures derived from stem cells, and they mimic how embryos form during the early days of pregnancy. These structures wouldn’t be able to develop into humans even if they were implanted into a uterus. Researchers originally conceived these artificial embryolike structures as a model to study the earliest moments of development because of widespread international rules aimed at restricting research on real human embryos that are older than two weeks after fertilization.