Egg centrifuge

[Cererean]

Mars Gravity Biosatellite was proposed to study embryonic development at partial gravity in rats. While that would give more useful data for humans than quails would, it's also a far more complicated experiment than one involving only eggs. Quail eggs have already been incubated in freefall; the obvious next step is to use a centrifuge to compare how they develop at varying levels of gravity. Being small and immobile, they shouldn't require as large a centrifuge as pregnant rats would. A 1 metre diameter centrifuge that provides an acceleration of 0.5g would have to spin at 30 RPM, though - I don't know how the spinning would effect the embryos and confound the experiment.

As far as I can tell, no such experiment has been done. It's a shame, because I don't think it would be expensive as space experiments go. Perhaps Musk would be willing to sponsor such a project.

[whitelancer64]

There is a centrifuge in the Japanese Kibo module (0.3 m in diameter), the Centrifuge-equipped Biological Experiment Facility (CBEF), that is used to study rodents and for other small biology experiments. I don't know if they have studied developing bird eggs.

[Cererean]

Ooh, I did not know that! Maybe I should send them an email to ask? Do they study partial gravity with it, or just 1g?

[whitelancer64]

Ooh, I did not know that! Maybe I should send them an email to ask? Do they study partial gravity with it, or just 1g?

I had to google it, but CBEF can rotate anywhere from 20 to 140 rpm, at 1 rpm intervals. That gives anywhere from 0.06 g at 20 rpm to 3.3 g at 140 rpm.

Lunar g would be 30 rpm and Mars g would be 47 rpm.