When humanity ventures out into the final frontier, we won’t be alone. I’m not talking about extraterrestrial life, but the Earth-based life that we’ll bring with us. Russia returned a research satellite last week that was carrying 75 mice, over 1,500 flies, microorganisms, plant seeds and cell cultures. The Bion-M No. 2 satellite was launched in August to conduct over 30 experiments in low Earth orbit, furthering our understanding of how life functions in space.
The mission, a joint effort between Roscosmos and Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems, concluded with a landing in the steppes of the Orenburg region. According to Space.com, the descent module was nicknamed Noah’s Ark because of how it was stuffed with animal life. The scorching hot capsule sparked a brush fire, but it was quickly extinguished so scientists could retrieve their experiments on-site. Unlike early Soviet spaceflights with animals, most famously Laika, this ark needed to return to Earth with living occupants. Unfortunately, ten mice didn’t survive the mission. Specialists assessed whether the flies onboard had sustained damage to their nervous systems after the trip to space.
The space zoo will help keep human alive in orbit
While the space zoo would imply that the experiments were conducted solely for animal research, the work done was intended to assist future long-term human space trips. Experiments aimed to develop life support systems that can endure both prolonged weightlessness and cosmic radiation and improve the radiation safety of crewed spacecraft. However, one of the experiments on the spacecraft sought to test the theory of panspermia. The unproven theory posits that all of life on Earth was brought here as bacteria riding asteroids. The experiment itself involved testing whether bacteria on basalt rocks could survive atmospheric re-entry. The results have yet to be revealed.
Spaceflight may never be boring, but it’s in a rough place at the moment. Roscosmos is a shadow of its former self, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine crushing the country’s ability to collaborate with Western institutions. The race to return to the Moon is quickly becoming a one-horse affair as the Trump administration has laid off thousands of NASA’s employees and canceled already paid-for missions. The China Manned Space Agency is now positioned to be the first to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, immediately making China the world’s preeminent space power.
