Monkeys to space?

1996/07/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronautika

Almost forty years ago, when the first satellites were launched into space, monkeys and other animals played an important role in opening the passage of man. Now it seems that monkeys have to open the way to man and return to space. Therefore, NASA is having problems with animal rights groups.

NASA must carry out missions Bion 11 and Bion 12 of 1988 in collaboration with France and Russia and in both cases two monkeys will space on a Russian ship. Then they will return to the ground after two weeks in space.

The goal of the mission is to develop experiments that help to understand the influence of weightlessness on human beings. We will analyze the physiological changes that will produce the lack of gravity in the monkeys. Electrodes will be implanted in the muscles of the legs and arms of the monkeys and will be tied in the seat throughout the flight.

This has altered animal rights defenders. So NASA is pushing to cancel those flights or at least improve the status of monkeys. Some consider that such experiments are not necessary. In fact, astronauts are doing long periods of time at the Mir space station, making it the best way to analyze the effects of weightlessness on humans. However, according to NASA scientists, astronauts take drugs to combat weightlessness, so they are not the most suitable subjects to study their effect and experiments with animals are absolutely necessary.

The pressure of animal defenders has already had consequences, since so far, in addition to the above, plans for electrode implantation have also existed in the brains of monkeys.