Animal Experiments in STS-107 (NASA)

Posted by michael on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @11:54AM from the space-ants-on-the-attack dept.

Ant writes "Six lead schools are participating in the STARS Program, actually designing, developing, and flying experiments in space. STARS students get an unforgettable opportunity to work with space scientists, engineers, and astronauts to design and develop their experiments. As lead schools, they are conducting experiments that will be viewed by thousands of people around the world. The experiments will be housed within BioServe's ICM (Isothermal Containment Module). The ICM is a small temperature-controlled facility and will provide the necessary experiment support such as physical containment, lighting, video imaging, and more. Obviously, my favorite one is the U.S.A.'s harvester ants tunneling in algar-based gel experiment for 16 days. I have a discussion on my message board watching this experiment. Now, where's Homer Simpson? ;)"

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Bees in space by MacAndrew · 2003-01-22 12:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

I remember an early student-designed experiment (early 80's?) involving bees; the bees did pretty well I think. I see they're sending spice bees (carpenter bees) on STS-107, Columbia. Here is the official NASA description.

I'm sure this has been thought of, but what if the bees escape? The females do sting. So there would be some interesting footage of astronauts chasing and avoiding a swarm of weightless, disoriented, pissed, and space sick bees. Could be interesting. Bug spray would be right out as an option. :) I wonder if NASA classes live bees as a hazardous cargo.