But non-human we mean animal here, not ghosts! The first question that
perhaps comes to mind why sent animals to space? ‘Animals in
space originally only served to test the survivability of spaceflight,
before manned space missions were attempted,’ that’s why.
Top 10 Animal Astronauts:
10. Mice
Since the 1950s, several attempts had been made to send mice into the
space and recover them successfully. In 1950, one mouse was placed on
board of the 5th flight of the Albert series of V2 launches but the
flight was unsuccessful as the parachute recovery system broke down. The
next year, i.e. in 1951, the U.S. Aerobee missile took flight with 11
mice in it and in 1958 the U.S. again sent 3 mice into the sky under
the project named ‘Mouse In Able’ which failed when all three died. In
another attempt, the lives of 14 more mice perished following their
lift-off in 1959. As they say, persistence will bring success therefore
in 1961, the French space centre sent a rat named Hector to space who
after flying to the height of 93 miles successfully returned. Hector is
now hailed as the first rat to have visited the space.
9. Guinea Pig
On March 9, 1961the first guinea pig successfully invaded the space on
the Soviet Sputnik 9 spacecraft along with a bunch of other animals
(dog, reptiles & mice). About thirty years later in 1990, China
launched a trip for 60 plants and some animals including guinea pigs on
the biosatellite FSW-1 3, which had successfully returned home.
8. Newts
In 1985, The Bion 7 mission was launched with several animals including
two moneys and 10 newts on board. In an attempt to study how the body
reacts to injuries in space, scientist had cut-off the front limbs and
removed part of the poor Newts’ lenses. In space, they observed a
significant phenomenon that the Newts were able to regenerate faster.
Over the years Newts have been sent to space for experimental purposes
several times for instance in other Bion flights and have been
experimented on several occasion in Japan’s Space Flyer Unit in 1995,
the Mir Space Station et al.
7. Frogs
NASA had sent two bullfrogs in space in 1970 under a programme called
the Orbiting Frog Otolith (OFO). This was a research procedure to find
out how otolith (which refers to a mechanism that controls equilibrium
in the inner ear) would adapt to weightless ambience. The program was a
success in terms of the right amount of data that researchers could
manage to collect but the poor frogs were never recovered.
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