Animal Astronauts: A brief history of animal spaceflight – Space Pod 05/20/15

Hello everyone. Today I'm doing a special SpacePod on animals in space. Originally, animals were sent into space to test the survivability of spaceflight, but now they are used for scientific research for a wide range of topics. So far, seven countries have sent animals into space, including the United States, Russia, Argentina, China, Japan, France and Iran. This is your SpacePod for May 20, 2015. The first animals into space were actually fruit flies. Fruit flies were launched by the United States aboard a V2 rocket in February of 1947. The fruit flies survived the flight and were recovered when they returned back to Earth. In 1948, the U.S. launched the first monkey into space, called Albert II. Albert II reached an altitude of 83 miles, but unfortunately died on impact when his parachute failed to deploy. In 1950, the U.S. sent a mouse into space, but again the mouse failed to survive when the parachute failed. The Soviet Union in 1951 sent two dogs, Zigen and Dezik, into space, and these animals survived the flight. All of these animal flights were suborbital, so the animals only experienced weightlessness for a short period of time. On 3 November 1957, the Soviet Union was the first country to launch an animal into orbit around the Earth, a dog named Leka. Leka was part of the Sputnik 2 mission, created at the request of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Engineers were only given four weeks to build and test the spacecraft, and this limited time frame meant that Leka was never intended to survive, as there was not enough time to build and test proper life support and re-entry systems. In July of 1959, the first rabbit in space, named Mafusa, was launched by the Soviet Union. This country also became the first country to launch animals into orbit and return them alive. This mission contained two dogs, a rabbit, mice, rats and flies. One of the two dogs on this mission, a dog named Stroka, had puppies after her return to Earth, and one of these puppies was given to President Kennedy's wife as a gift in 1961. Also in 1961, the US launched Ham the Chimp in a mercury capsule. Ham the Chimp demonstrated that simple tasks could be performed in space, as he was trained to pull levers to receive food and to avoid electric shocks. France launched the first cat into space in 1963. Her name was Felicette, and she survived the 15-minute flight. In 1968, the Soviet Union sent a tortoise, wine flies and mealworms around the moon and back to Earth, and returned them successfully. By the 1970s, the focus of animal spaceflight had shifted from just testing the basic survivability of species in space to a more scientific focus. The first spiders in space, named Arabella and Anita, were aboard Skylab and used to test web building in microgravity. The first fish in space, which were mummichogs, were kept in a plastic bag aboard Skylab, and they actually had a bit of trouble adjusting to swimming in microgravity. They actually took 22 days to adjust their swimming patterns to swim confidently in space. The Soviet Union were the first country to send newts into space, and in 1985 used newts to study regeneration during spaceflight. They amputated parts of the newts' front limbs and used the results of this to relate how humans might recover if they suffer an injury during spaceflight. Japan also launched newts as part of their first animal experiment in space aboard their Space Flyer Unit spacecraft. The cool thing about this spacecraft is that it launched aboard a Japanese H-II rocket, but then was retrieved 10 months later using Space Shuttle Endeavour and returned to Earth. I don't think the newts survived for that long, though. One of the coolest animals sent into space would have to be jellyfish. NASA sent jellyfish into space in 1991 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Like humans, jellyfish like to orientate themselves in respect to gravity. That is, they like to stay upright. Baby jellyfish were grown in microgravity to adulthood and then brought back down to Earth and tested for their ability to keep upright. They failed the test. This seems to indicate that if human infants were raised in microgravity and then brought back down to Earth, they would have trouble with balance as well. I'm running out of time here, so I'd just like to mention that in 2007, tardigrades, also known as water bears, survived 10 days' exposure to the vacuum of space without any protection. And during the same mission, the first live animal birth occurred in space when a Russian cockroach gave birth to 33 baby cockroaches in space. Thank you for watching, and I'd like to give a huge thank you to all the citizens of tomorrow who helped contribute to this video. If you would like information on how you can contribute to these videos, head over to patreon.com slash spacepod. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you're notified when new videos are uploaded. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to talk about all the animals launched into space in this video, but if you have a specific animal that you'd like to know more about, then leave a comment below or let us know via social media. My name is Lisa Stojanovski, and I'd like to end by giving a huge thank you to all the animals who have given their lives in helping us advance our knowledge of life in space. May they rest in peace.