Animal astronauts return from space mission

Animal astronauts return from space mission

A Russian space capsule containing mice, sand eels, geckos, gerbils, snails, fish, plants and microflora has returned from a month long mission to space. The Bion-M craft made a parachute-assisted landing on a field in the Orenberg Region, 1,200 kilometres southeast of Moscow on Monday. A mobile laboratory and helicopters were dispatched to the landing zone for immediate testing of the effects of weightlessness on the animal's cell structure.

The Bion-M capsule, attached to a Soyuz 2-1A rocket, was blasted into space from Kazakhstan on April 19 for a study examining the effects of microgravity on the organism's skeleton, muscles, heart and nervous system. The rocket spun at an orbital height of 575 kilometres above Earth, surpassing that of the International Space Station.

The different species in the 'space menagerie' were divided up into five different containers for the 30 day journey, which not all the animals survived. An equipment failure killed eight gerbils onboard while half of the 53 mice also perished; all 15 geckos survived. Scientists hope the findings will help pave the way to the building of a planned base on the moon for unmanned flights to Mars.

The survivors will be studied by laboratories in the US, Europe, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. In February 2010, Iran launched a mouse, two turtles and some worms into space atop a rocket.

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This is very interesting news. Here in the USA we are constricted on news of this type due to USA P.C.
I find this very fascinating and I can not wait to see a detailed report on the effects of earth orbit on these animals.

Remembering Laika, the first animal to orbit the Earth (1957): en.wikipedia.org...

As controversial as these experiments may look to some people, I think they are vital in research and space exploration. I remember seeing a Soviet short film with a dog "astronaut" that was strolling around on Mars in a little spacesuit

Does anyone know what or why that guy was scraping at on the orb ?
Just was wondering if he was uncovering something and what it might be ?

Good find grimghost