From spiders struggling to create webs in orbit to bats clinging to the exterior of the Space Shuttle, the stories of animals sent into space are unhappy because their lives, made available to an unscrupulous anthropocentric culture, have taken on a marginal role compared to progress.
The animals sent into space and their sad fate
On June 11, 1948, a rhesus monkey named Albert I became the first animal to reach space, tethered aboard a V-2 Blossom rocket that flew to a suborbital height of 83 miles (134 kilometers) above the surface.
Since then, scientists have sent a dizzying array of living organisms into space, including dogs, monkeys, reptiles, insects, plants, and various microorganisms. Many animals were killed as a result of these pioneering missions.
As she said NASA “they gave their lives, in the name of technological progress, paving the way for humanity’s numerous incursions into space”.
The Soviet Union sent its fair share of dogs into space during the formative years of the country’s space program, including Laika, the first animal ever sent into Earth orbit. Laika died during this one-way mission. These experiments were crude by today’s standards, as Laika, among other Soviet dogs sent into space, were literally strays picked up off the street.
Before the 1957 Laika mission, the Soviet Union conducted a series of high-altitude tests with dogs. In 1951, a dog named Smelaya ran away a day before the scheduled launch, prompting fears that she might be eaten by wolves living nearby, according to NASA’s “A Brief History of Animals in Space.”
Smelaya managed to return the next day and the test flight proved to be a success. Later that same year, a dog named Bobik also ran away, never to return. Undeterred, the mission planners found a replacement hanging out near a local pub
The team named her ZIB, the Russian acronym for “Replacement of the Missing Dog Bobik.” It’s the classic story of going out to a bar one day and finding yourself launched to a suborbital height 100 kilometers the next day.
The first mice to reach space did so in the 1950s, but these early missions often ended in disaster. In 1959, the U.S. Air Force blocked a launch attempt from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California when sensors failed to detect signs of life in the Discoverer 3 capsule.
The four mice were found dead, after an overdose of Krylon paint sprayed on their cages to cover the ragged edges. Evidently the mice had found the Krylon tastier and more lethal than the formula provided to them.
A second launch attempt with a backup team of mice was also canceled when sensors registered 100% humidity inside the capsule. “The capsule was opened and the sensor was discovered to be located under one of the mouse cages,” according to NASA.
According to the space agency, the sensor “was unable to distinguish the difference between water and mouse urine” and the launch continued after it had dried. The rocket finally managed to lift off on June 3, but the rocket’s upper stage fired downward, causing the vehicle, along with the four mice, to crash into the Pacific Ocean. Clearly, it was a mission that simply wasn’t meant to be.
Ham the chimpanzee is famous for being the first great ape in space, earning this recognition on January 31, 1961. One of the key objectives of this NASA Mercury-Redstone mission was to determine whether animals could perform tasks in space.
To this end, Ham, who was only 2 years old when he began training, was taught to move the levers, both to receive rewards in the form of banana balls and to avoid punishment in the form of electric shocks to his feet.
Ham, in addition to dealing with the terrifying demands of space flight, also had to actively avoid receiving electric shocks during his journey. The young chimpanzee performed exceptionally well and despite incredible adversity, as NASA explained:
“Ham performed these tasks well, pushing the continuous avoidance lever about 50 times and receiving only two shocks for bad timing. On the fair avoidance lever, his score was perfect. Reaction time on the blue light lever averaged 0.82 seconds, compared to a preflight performance of 0.8 seconds.”
“Ham had gone from a heavy acceleration load on exit, to six minutes of weightlessness, and another heavy g load on reentry, almost missing a trick. The onboard cameras that filmed Ham’s reaction to weightlessness also recorded a surprising amount of dust and debris floating inside the capsule during its zenith.”
The mission’s success set the stage for Alan Shepard, who became the first U.S. citizen to reach space in 1961. Ham lived the rest of his life in zoos.
On October 18, 1963, the French space program launched Félicette, a stray Persian cat, into space. Electrodes were implanted in the cat’s skull to monitor neurological activity and trigger physical responses. Surprisingly or predictably (it’s hard to say which), Félicette remains the only cat to have been successfully transported into space. Scientists euthanized Félicette shortly after the flight to study her brain.
In 2017, a crowdfunding campaign succeeded in building a memorial to Félicette, a bronze statue depicting the cat “perched on the Earth, gazing up at the skies over which she once traveled.” The statue is currently located at the International Space University in France.
In February 1966, the Soviet space program launched dogs Veterok and Ugolyok beyond the Van Allen protective belts, which they did to study the prolonged effects of space travel and the deleterious effects of radiation. The dogs stayed in space for 21 days, which remains the canine record.
When they returned, the dogs were dehydrated and had lost weight. Veterok and Ugolyok also showed weakening of circulation, muscle atrophy and loss of coordination; it took a whole month to recover. Their limited mobility probably had a lot to do with it, but it was an early sign that prolonged stays in space can produce adverse health effects.
The 21 days spent in space remained a record for any animal, including humans, until the Soviet Soyuz 11 mission, in which three cosmonauts remained aboard the Salyut 1 space station for 23 days. Tragically, the three men died during reentry and remain the only humans to have died in space (the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia were technically not in space when the shuttle disintegrated on February 1, 2003, resulting in their deaths).
For the Soviet Zond 5 mission, a group of animals made a historic journey around the Moon and back. Launched in 1968, the payload included a pair of steppe tortoises, hundreds of fruit fly eggs, worms, plants (including air-dried cells from carrots, tomatoes, peas, wheat and barley), seeds, bacteria and other creatures.
No living creature had ever ventured so far into space and the mission ended successfully with the landing of the capsule in the Indian Ocean.
The turtles were still alive but on the verge of starvation, following a 39-day fast. A duplicate mission later in the year experienced an anomaly that resulted in loss of cabin pressure and the disappearance of all biological samples.
One fish, specifically a mummichog ( Fundulus heteorclitus ), was sent to Skylab in 1973. Scientists were trying to study ways in which vestibular function, which controls balance in normal gravity, can be impaired in space.
The tiny fish, along with a group of fish that developed from embryos carried into space, exhibited strange swimming behavior, moving in circles. “The fish probably responded to signals from extremely fine hairs in their otolith [un organo vestibolare nei pesci] that right themselves in zero gravity,” according to NASA.
“They responded by swimming in a forward cycle that was distorted into a lateral cycle by the tendency to turn their backs to the light.” The fish apparently responded to light (i.e., visual cues) in the absence of gravity, which would normally allow them to discern up from down.
In 1973, scientists delivered Anita and Arabella, two common spiders (Araneus diadematus), to Skylab 3. High school student Judith Miles wondered whether microgravity conditions would impede or somehow complicate the spiders’ ability to weave tele, and proposed the Skylab experiment, with scientists from the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Both spiders struggled at first and were reluctant to do anything while in orbit, but with a little stimulation and access to rare filet mignon (yes, really) and water, the spiders began to weave rudimentary cobwebs. Anita and Arabella got better at building their nets in subsequent attempts, and their silky creations compare favorably to those made on Earth.
“The Judy Miles experiment received much attention both within NASA and in the world press and indicated that there was keen interest in space experiments involving living organisms,” NASA described.
All seven crew members were killed during the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, but something made it through this terrible episode: worms. Incredibly, containers of roundworms ( C. elegans ) managed to survive Columbia’s disastrous breakup.
The nutrient solution they were stored in acted as a shield, as did the container. The worms also managed to reproduce and produce a lineage that produced five generations in the months following the accident.
In one of the greatest feats of endurance, a group of tardigrades managed to survive 10 days of exposure to open space. The experiment took place in 2007 as part of the European Space Agency’s FOTON-M3 mission and established that tardigrades, also known as water bears, are among the most resilient organisms on the planet and beyond.
“Our main finding is that space vacuum, leading to extreme dehydration and cosmic radiation, was not a problem for water bears,” said TARDIS project leader Ingemar Jönsson, of Kristianstad University in Sweden.
As Space Shuttle Discovery prepared to launch for the STS-119 mission in March 2009, ground controllers noticed a bat clinging to its external fuel tank. Looking at the images, wildlife experts believed the bat had broken a wing and had a problem with its right shoulder or wrist.
Ground controllers hoped it would fly away on its own, but the bat remained where it was, remaining visible on the fuel tank as the Shuttle passed the tower. The bat’s ultimate fate was never determined, but it’s fair to say that this story probably didn’t have a happy ending.
#saddest #stories #animals #space