At 23:08 Beijing time on May 24, 2026, the Long March 2F Y23 carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-23 crewed spacecraft, ignited and launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. About 10 minutes later, the spacecraft successfully separated from the rocket and entered its designated orbit. The crew members are reported to be in excellent condition, and the launch has been declared a complete success.

The space experiment project led by Professor Sun Yeqing’s team from the Institute of Environmental Systems Biology at the School of Environmental Science and Engineering has once again achieved outstanding results. The extravehicular plant exposure experiment unit and the intravehicular gravity plant experiment container, designed and developed under the leadership of Associate Professor Zhang Meng from the Institute, successfully lifted off with the spacecraft. These units will undergo a six-month series of space radiation and microgravity exposure experiments both inside and outside the station modules.

The space experiment payloads launched this time support the scientific project titled “Analysis of DNA Methylation Regulatory Mechanisms in Rice and Arabidopsis Induced by Space Radiation and Microgravity Based on Physical and Biological Radiation Dosimetry.” Within the payload experiment units, a biological stack configuration is utilized to carry thousands of rice seeds and 130,000 Arabidopsis seeds, including a variety of mutants for both species.

This project features three primary innovations. First is the initial implementation of multi-directional high-energy heavy ion radiation detection at the individual organism level. According to Associate Professor Zhang Meng, the project lead, this mission marks the first time in spaceflight that the team’s independently developed 3D rice and Arabidopsis biological stacks, paired with corresponding radiation detection technology, will be used to achieve individual-level detection of high-energy heavy ion radiation for both rice and the much smaller Arabidopsis seeds. This technology will provide precise, individual-level data on the spatial heavy ion radiation exposure for every single seed during the six-month flight.

Second is the synergistic support from two major experimental platforms on the China Space Station (CSS) for long-term in-orbit research. The project’s space experiments will rely on the radiation biology exposure device—co-developed by our university and the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences—as well as the intravehicular Varying-Gravity Experiment Cabinet. The radiation biology exposure device, located outside the Mengtian module, provides biological samples with a space exposure environment under lower shielding conditions. Meanwhile, the Varying-Gravity Experiment Cabinet inside the Wentian module will provide space exposure conditions that simulate both Earth’s gravity (1G) and Lunar gravity (1/6G).

Third, the research findings are expected to reveal the epigenetic mechanisms of plant stress resistance. By conducting space exposure and subsequent ground-based planting experiments on these seeds, the research team will systematically observe the impact of the two major environmental factors—long-term space radiation and microgravity—on plant physiological phenotypes and multi-omics. Furthermore, by utilizing multiple methylation mutants of rice and Arabidopsis, the project will systematically elucidate the role of DNA methylation in how plants respond to space radiation and microgravity stress. This will provide scientific support for future deep-space life support systems and space breeding research.