Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
Glasgow and Kyushu researchers plan to fly two teaspoons of whisky on a CubeSat for five years
University of Glasgow and Kyushu Institute of Technology researchers plan a 2028 CubeSat carrying 0.3 fluid ounces of whisky to orbit for five years. The team pitches the flight as groundwork for making drugs in orbit, a goal that for now rests on a sensor whose published test was telling whiskies apart in the lab.
The Scientist · Science desk
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What happened
- Researchers from the two universities will spend three months designing the CubeSat, a nanosatellite class that NASA says typically measures about 4 inches on each side.
- The onboard sensor is an artificial tongue built from sub-microscopic gold and aluminum slices in a checkerboard, first described in a 2019 Nanoscale study.
- Terpenes, the compounds that give whiskies their distinct aromas, are the class the tongue will measure in orbit.
- The team also wants to work out how to extract ethanol in orbit, a step Discover links to future orbital factories for molecules that are hard to make on Earth.
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Why it matters
- constraint Five years of orbital readings will be hard to interpret until the tongue is shown to catch slow drift within a single sample.
- constraint The results will bear on monitoring a known mixture in orbit; the link to diabetes, cancer or Alzheimer's drugs stays a hope until a flight actually synthesizes something.
- capability If the sensor works, later orbital-synthesis experiments get a five-year reference record from a mixture whose chemistry is already well understood on the ground.
The sample is about 8.9 millilitres [12], roughly two teaspoons, according to Discover Magazine's account of the Glasgow and Kyushu project [1][5]. The team chose whisky because its chemistry is already well studied. "Whisky gives us a very recognizable, very well-understood model for studying and monitoring biological and chemical processes in microgravity. This project will provide valuable new insights into how fermentation and chemical evolution can be monitored and controlled in space, as well as how ethanol can be made in orbit," said Gilles Bailet, the University of Glasgow researcher leading the project [3][4].
The chemistry is still dense. Scotch must spend at least three years in oak casks in Scotland, and a 2016 study in the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry suggested that the spirit's contact with the cask yields a mixture of thousands of compounds [11].
The sensor's published track record, as Discover describes it, is a 2019 bench test. Researchers poured different whiskies over the gold and aluminum slices and compared how the metals absorbed light. The tongue told the drinks apart with greater than 99 percent accuracy [9]. The thing this doesn't tell you is how the chip performs at its actual job on the CubeSat: following changes in the chemical composition of one sample across five years in orbit [7]. Separating two whiskies and catching slow drift inside one are different measurements, and the published figure covers only the first [9].
The other open question is the control. Whisky chemistry already changes over time on Earth, in the cask [11]. Without a matched sample kept on the ground, a shift the tongue records in orbit could come from elapsed time alone. Discover's report does not say whether the team plans one, or how fermentation and distillation will physically run inside the satellite [2].
The ambition is much larger than the payload. "Our ultimate aim is that our project could help to scale up chemistry and biomanufacturing in space, where there is a great deal of potential to produce high-value pharmaceuticals and next-generation cancer therapeutics," Bailet said [15]. Discover reports the researchers hope for clues toward synthesizing chemicals that could go into medicines for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's disease [13]. The flight itself will measure aroma compounds and ethanol in a few millilitres of spirit [10][14].
I think the CubeSat is a sensible test of whether a small optical sensor can follow known chemistry in orbit for five years [7][9]. Its bearing on drug manufacturing would come later, from an experiment that makes a molecule in orbit and measures how much of it comes out [14].
What to watch
- The payload design after the three-month phase, including how fermentation or distillation runs on board and whether a matched whisky sample stays on Earth.
- Ground tests that age one whisky over months, which would show whether the gold-aluminum tongue detects gradual change in a single sample.
- The 2028 launch and the first orbital terpene readings the team releases.