Last Friday, a crew of geckoes, forty-five mice, eight Mongolian gerbils, fish, snails, and plant seedlings were rocket launched on the Bion M1 into space, for the longest animal space experiment to date, a round trip lasting thirty days. The Russian spacecraft will relay information to scientists on the ground interested in studying the health effects of space on the animals.
Animals were the pioneers for manned space flight. Scientists wanted to make sure animals could survive before they sent any humans. Russia sent dogs, rabbits, and mice on short duration flights in the early 1960s.
The last Bion expedition was in 1997, when a fifteen day expedition took Rhesus monkeys, geckos, and amphibians into space. In its half-century of existence the Bion program has sent everything from seedlings, unicellular organisms, and plants to Rhesus monkeys, insects, rats, and fish into space.
Describing the animals that are picked to take ...
