Mice, geckos and gerbils and other animals, were blasted into space Friday on a mission to test the effects of long-term space flight on living creatures.
A Russian Soyuz rocket, the Bion-M1, took off from Kazakhstan on Friday morning with the animals on board. Scientists plan to monitor the tiny creatures and say they plan to return them safely to Earth.
The animals on board include 45 mice, eight Mongolian gerbils, 15 geckos, as well as snails, fish and tiny microscopic organisms.
"This is first and foremost to determine how our organisms adapt to weightlessness and to understand what we need to do to make sure that our organisms survive extended flights," the TsSKB-Progress space research center department head Valery Abrashkin told Russian state television in a press conference.
The animals will fly 357 miles above Earth for a month. At a month long, this mission is a lot longer than previous ones testing the effect of space on animals. Scientists said the experiments being conducted on the mice and other animals would have been impossible aboard the International Space Station, because they pose a sanitary hazard.
The experiment is a joint venture between Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, and NASA. Scientists from both agencies will study the animals. Specifically, scientists will study how microgravity, radiation and long-term exposure to a controlled environment affect the muscular and skeletal system of the animals. Some of the mice are equipped with implanted sensors measuring their heart rates and blood pressure.
The small menagerie is accompanied by 24 measuring devices and other scientific objects. The testing could give us clues into the health risks an astronaut faces.
The scientists say that while the animals should survive the mission and return to Earth, they will then need to be put to sleep humanely so the experts can get the tests they need.
