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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
David Cox

Does the future of medicine lie in space?

Illustration of a cosmonaut amid science paraphernalia
Illustration: freepik.com/Getty Images/Philip Lay, Observer Design Illustration: Observer Design

In a small lab, squeezed into the corner of a skyscraper in downtown Tel Aviv, Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Yamin is proudly holding what he calls “a little James Bond-style suitcase factory, powered by the sun”.

As with many of 007’s finest contraptions, initial impressions are inauspicious. But in the past four years, these little metal boxes, coated in solar panels, have repeatedly blasted into orbit on the back of a SpaceX rocket, bringing groundbreaking new insights back to Earth for things ranging from the behaviour of leukaemia cells to the best ways of generating lab-grown steak.

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