The habitat that golden orb spiders Esmeralda and Gladys occupied on the International Space Station was shown to Cady Coleman by NASA. The image is from NASA.
Since the first fruit flies launched to Earth's upper atmosphere in 1947, animals have played a significant role in space exploration.
The human spaceflight program began with animals. International space agencies used animals to test the survivability of spaceflight and the effects microgravity might have on human's biological processes.
After launching fruit flies, American researchers flew monkeys and mice on suborbital flights. The Soviet Union launched dozens of stray dogs on suborbital flights in the 1950s, before the first human to travel into outer space in 1961.
There is a history of animals in space.
Stephen Walker is the author of "Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space" and he spoke to Space.com about how animals have paved the way for human spaceflight. The interview has been edited to make it clearer. You can find it on Amazon.
Space.com: What space-faring animals have you covered in your research?
Thousands of animals have been in space. The variety of animals is staggering and I can't tell you which ones are in which order.
The tardigrade is the animal that I love the most. Water bears are tiny, sweet-looking things that can survive anywhere. In 2007, a European Space Agency mission put 3,000 tardigrades outside of a rocket, exposing the animals to all the dangers of space. They weren't protected by anything and only 32% of them made it through 12 days. It's amazing, actually.
Frogs were sent to space for balance research. Honey bees were sent up to learn if they could make honey in space. The Soviets sent two tortoises to the moon. Two spiders, Gladys and Esmeralda, were studied on the International Space Station and were able to adapt to weightless conditions and create beautiful space webs to catch flies.
A lot of animals have gone to space. In 1947, fruit flies were the first to be launched into space, followed by baby squid in June of this year.
Why do you think animals were sent to space?
At this point in 1947, it was obvious that the next frontier was space. The Soviet Union and the United States are going to fight again. There were a lot of things they didn't know about space and the human body.
In order to find out, they had to send up animals, starting with fruit flies in 1947, which the U.S. launched some 40 miles into the upper atmosphere on a V2 rocket. They moved on to monkeys. Project Albert was a seminal moment in the history of space flight. Each of the flights had a rhesus monkey inside the nose cone of a V2 rocket. The monkeys were killed.
Different animals were selected for spaceflight experiments.
In my book "Beyond," I say that the choice of animal to experiment with reflects the ideological culture of that society. When the Russians began sending animals to space in 1951, they started with dogs because they are obedient and easy to train, much like cosmonauts.
Chimpanzees were chosen by Americans because of their similarities to humans. Chimpanzees were given tasks which involved a certain amount of autonomously pulling levers and other things, to verify that humans would be able to do this in space, too.
The Soviets and Americans were both interested in independence and autonomy, but the Soviets were more interested in obeying.
The Sputnik 2 capsule had Laika in it. Universal Images Group is a part of the Sovfoto/Universal Images Group.
How did the Soviet Union choose the dogs to send to space?
They picked the dogs. They looked for specific types of dogs, such as females, mongrels, and small dogs, in order to make them easier to fit in the space capsule. The Institute of Aviation Space Medicine in Moscow secretly trained the dogs.
Many of the dogs sent to space died during their flights. The first dog in space died in 1957. The Soviet Union did not have the ability to bring Laika home after she was sent on a one-way mission, so animal rights activists started to react. She had enough food and oxygen for seven days, but would die in the sky, which excited real anger in the West. She was a real Soviet icon until Gagarin became the first human in space.
How did animals' involvement change as the space program evolved?
Two rhesus monkeys that flew on the Bion 11 mission, a life science collaboration of the U.S., Russia and France, were the last monkeys launched to space.
They were looking to study things like muscular atrophy and whether animals and people could survive long periods in space. In 1998 a mission called Neurolab focused on the effects of microgravity on the nervous system. The largest number of animals accompanying humans on a space shuttle was on this mission. There were a lot of animals in Noah's Ark, including a lot of crickets.
One of the interesting things they discovered was that many of the mother rats stopped looking after their babies in weightlessness because they were not able to cope with motherhood. Half of the baby rats died within the first few days because they weren't getting fed, warmth or shelter from their mothers.
How did animals go to space?
Let's take a example. On November 29, 1961, Enos became the first chimp to go into space. His flight was a dress rehearsal for John Glenn's first orbital flight, which took place in February 1962.
The same hardware, Mercury capsule, tracking systems and so on were used in every part of the flight to test the upcoming human flight. The Americans tested the ability of the Chimpanzees to move levers using a psychomotor in order to see if a human could actually pilot a spaceship. They received an electric shock if the Chimp got it wrong.
A Chimpanzees named Enos is going to be in a flight that mimics the mission that made John Glenn the first American to go to space. The image is from Bettman/Getty Images.
The smartest chimp was Enos, he could work the psychomotor and never make a mistake. They received a banana pellet as a reward if they did the exercise correctly. One of the tests required the Chimpanzees to pull one of the levers 50 times in order to get a banana pellet. On the 49th pull, he would hold out his hand for the pellet he knew would come out after the next pull, because he was so good at this. That's how good he was.
The psychomotor inside the capsule malfunctioned and he received 35 electric shocks for doing the right thing. Something incredible happened here as well. It's clear from the original NASA reports that Enos understood something was wrong and tried to change the situation by pulling levers differently.
There's no doubt about it, these animals made terrible sacrifice. They helped pave the way for human space flight. Had animals not been used, more humans would have died. Things would have gone wrong. The same applies as we contemplate human missions to Mars and beyond. There is always a heavy price to pay. We need to remember to change that.
"Beyond" can be purchased on Amazon or Bookshop.org.
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