Zond 5 Mission : 50 yrs ago first Gaians reached another world

a reply to: firerescue

A Manned mission on the Zond program was more than prepared, it was in some sense already progressing and there is no doubt that when NASA learned about the nature of what it was inside that spacecraft they became extremely worried if no in panic due to the Historic meaning of it.

The Zond 5 was carrying different alive specimens, but also there were human tissues samples among the biological payload, and if we consider human cells as part of humanity, anyway they carry human genoma, well I am afraid that they were really the first ones into bring our specie in a flyby to another world.

Perhaps it was not an entire person, but the cells were well preserved in ideal laboratory conditions, they were cell cultures, so still alive, when they were placed there and when the checked them after the capsule was recovered.

Please check:

Experiments with microorganisms and human cell cultures in space on the Zond 5 and Zond 7 missions

3 down vote accepted The animals sent farthest from the Earth were the tortoises (and other creatures, see below) on Zond 7. They were sent roughly 407,000 km from the center of the Earth (possibly more depending on whether the distance of Zond 7 from the moon was calculated from the surface or the center).

Regarding what was on board, there is an overview paper "Results of Biological Investigations Undertaken on the Zond-5, Zond-6 and Zond-7 Stations" Gazenko, O. G.; Antipov, V. V.; Parfenov, G. P. Cosmic Research, Vol. 9, p.548 which is a translation from Russian "Kosmicheskie Issledovania" journal.

It states that Zond 5 and 7 were identical by animal selection. It included: Turtles, Drosophila, Tradescantia, Allium cepa (onion), dry seeds of Rye, different strains of Chlorella, and E. coli and other biological objects.

Human tissue samples were also on board according to another paper (Zhukov-Verezhnikov, et al.).

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness