Mice, Newts Retrieved After a Month Orbiting Earth At 345 Miles Up

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Mice, Newts Retrieved After a Month Orbiting Earth At 345 Miles Up

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 19, 2013 @08:38AM from the eye-of-space-newt-was-called-for dept.

The Associated Press (as carried by the Washington Post) reports that a living payload of newts and mice has been retrieved after a month orbiting earth in a Russian space capsule at an altitude of 345 miles, far higher than the ISS's orbital distance of 205 miles. Says the story: "Fewer than half of the 53 mice and other rodents who blasted off on April 19 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome survived the flight, Russian news agencies reported, quoting Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and the lead researcher. Sychov said this was to be expected and the surviving mice were sufficient to complete the study, which was designed to show the effects of weightlessness and other factors of space flight on cell structure. All 15 of the lizards survived, he said. The capsule also carried small crayfish and fish."

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Cause of death by Jerry+Smith · 2013-05-19 08:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

Radiation? Life support system malfunctions? Launch related problems? Bit more details would make it interesting.

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All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
1. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  What about lizard related problems?
2. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:13 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  They failed to place their seat backs and tray tables in a fully upright position during takeoff and landing.
3. Re:Cause of death by flayzernax · 2013-05-19 09:20 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I wonder if it's far enough to get out of the earths magnetosphere. By the way if they didn't mention problems with the experiment its probably safe to assume everything went up and operated fine. Don't know till someone releases a paper in a journal though.
  I would wager bone loss in the mammals and weightlessness are the biggest contributing factors to death/disease. It could have been something else like mice getting upset and turning on each other because of their environment. Even simple non aggressive animals like frogs can become aggressive due to boredom and environmental reasons.
  Perhaps a lower metabolism benefited the lizards/newts. Time to RTFA =)
4. Re:Cause of death by EdZ · 2013-05-19 09:20 · Score: 1
  
  Bit more details would make it interesting.
  They've only just retrieved the thing! Modern equipment is good, but we can't just wave a magic wand/tricorder over some dead mice and get a diagnosis yet.
5. Re:Cause of death by JustOK · 2013-05-19 09:24 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  and didn't turn their cell phones off.
  
  --
  rewriting history since 2109
6. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, and one of the mice was playing Angry Cats on his smartphone during the launch, causing devastating problems due to WiFi.
7. Re:Cause of death by multisync · 2013-05-19 09:25 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Hard landing in Kazakhstan desert would be another possibility.
  
  --
  I don't care why you're posting AC
8. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:31 · Score: 0
  
  How do you feed 53 mice and 15 lizards for a month in space? It turns out you don't have to.
9. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:39 · Score: 0
  
  That's crazy talk
10. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:41 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I wonder if it's far enough to get out of the earths magnetosphere.
  No. Let me put it this way, on the day side, Earth's magnetosphere extends more than twice as far as geosynchronous satellites. On the night side it extends far, far past the Moon (which will encompass the Moon if it happens to be there at the time).
11. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 10:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Bit more details would make it interesting.
  They've only just retrieved the thing! Modern equipment is good, but we can't just wave a magic wand/tricorder over some dead mice and get a diagnosis yet.
  They're dead, Jim
12. Re:Cause of death by fustakrakich · 2013-05-19 10:08 · Score: 1
  
  Bit more details would make it interesting.
  They were delicious
  
  --
  “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
13. Re:Cause of death by ShanghaiBill · 2013-05-19 11:18 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Radiation? Life support system malfunctions? Launch related problems? Bit more details would make it interesting.
  Also, how did they dispose of the dead mice, and mouse poop? If the dead and decaying mice, and mouse poop, were floating around with the living mice, that would not be a healthy environment, and may explain some of the subsequent deaths.
14. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 12:12 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Do you know something the rest of us don't?
  Nope, he knows something that you don't.
  The Moon isn't always on the nightside of Earth.
15. Re:Cause of death by flayzernax · 2013-05-19 12:51 · Score: 0
  
  Thanks, that is informative.
16. Re:Cause of death by angel'o'sphere · 2013-05-19 13:24 · Score: 2
  
  Bone loss?
  They where up there for a month!!!!
  How should bone loss cause a death? Especially as you don't really need your bones in space ...
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
17. Re:Cause of death by capebretonsux · 2013-05-19 14:44 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Without a doubt, heart attacks. I work with lab mice every day, and they're very high strung creatures. When we order mice from a supply house they often pack in one or two 'extra' mice in the event a death occurs in transit. This is just regular shipping via truck/plane, so the stresses of going through a launch into orbit being so much more I'd expect a high mortality rate.
18. Re:Cause of death by Yomers · 2013-05-19 17:01 · Score: 2
  
  Quoting TFA "landed slightly off course but safely in a planted field near Orenburg, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of Moscow". Thats indeed near Kazakhstan border.
19. Re:Cause of death by torsmo · 2013-05-19 17:22 · Score: 1
  
  See, this is what happens when you don't turn your cell phones off in a flight. You get dead rodents, Gojira and cretinous former presidential candidates.
20. Re:Cause of death by pv2b · 2013-05-19 19:57 · Score: 1
  
  The moon isn't always at the night side of the Earth.
21. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 21:30 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Radiation? Life support system malfunctions? Launch related problems? Bit more details would make it interesting.
  The PhysOrg article has a few snippets information:
  
  The animals on board the Bion-M craft died because of equipment failure or due to the stresses of space, scientists said.....But at the end of the experiment, "less than half of the mice made it—but that was to be expected," Sychov told Russian news agencies. "Unfortunately, because of equipment failure, we lost all the gerbils."
22. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 21:51 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, because these mice knew that space exploration is much more important than what their cousins are doing in other labs, such as boring cancer research.
  That, and the countdown, was too much for some of them and they basically died because of too much responsability!
23. Re:Cause of death by turp182 · 2013-05-19 23:57 · Score: 2
  
  Wish I had karma, you just described a nightmare situation, I wouldn't want to be the one cleaning up the capsule after the trip.
  
  --
  BlameBillCosby.com
24. Re:Cause of death by Requiem18th · 2013-05-20 00:32 · Score: 1
  
  I think the Lizards ate half the mice.
  
  --
  But... the future refused to change.
25. Re:Cause of death by Requiem18th · 2013-05-20 00:36 · Score: 1
  
  Proof that geckos are bad ass!
  
  --
  But... the future refused to change.
26. Re:Cause of death by Sockatume · 2013-05-20 00:54 · Score: 1
  
  By "stress" he means "physiological stress", like the acceleration involved in launching. Not stress as in "boy, do I have a tight deadline".
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
27. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 01:01 · Score: 0
  
  Without a doubt, heart attacks.
  Mice don't die from heart attack. Even atherosclerosis-prone mice on specific diet. (Zhou et al.; Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2001;21(9):1470-6)
28. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 03:21 · Score: 0
  
  Precisely. We actually have only limited data on how much of the damage recorded on astronauts/test animals/cell cultures is due to microgravity, as opposed to both the (very rough) takeoff and the (worse) landing.
  That was the coolest thing about the space shuttle, despite its 20 degree glide angle (and hence also somewhat bumpy landing). We'd have had essentially no data without it and I think it justified the enormous cost of the program.
29. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 03:25 · Score: 0
  
  Perhaps a lower metabolism benefited the lizards/newts
  They sent Gingrich into space? They should have left that lizard up there!
30. Re:Cause of death by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  You need them for a parachute landing, which is rather violent.
No Amphibians Listed in Article by Da5id+H. · 2013-05-19 08:47 · Score: 1

That headline should read "Mice, Lizards...".
1. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by idji · 2013-05-19 08:51 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No LIZARDS on this spacecraft. Newts are amphibians!!!!
2. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by dtremenak · 2013-05-19 09:20 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The animals on the spacecraft were geckos, which certainly are lizards. There were no newts launched on Bion-M1, nor any other kind of amphibian.
  Sources:
  http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1304/19bionm1/#.UZlBX39dAbE
  http://www.space.com/20732-russia-launches-animals-space-bion-m1.html
3. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:26 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  The gecko's name is Newt. And he thinks he's an amphibian. And I love him.
4. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:29 · Score: 0
  
  oh my
5. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by McGruber · 2013-05-19 11:40 · Score: 0
  
  Newts are amphibians!!!!
  Not all of them; this newt is a cretin: A cretin named newt
6. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by Culture20 · 2013-05-19 12:59 · Score: 1
  
  But they turned into newts! Science has met magic.
7. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 13:41 · Score: 0
  
  Actually the original article says lizards, not newts (which are not lizards), so who knows where the OP came up with newts... perhaps they have confused the two their whole lives.
8. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by shikaisi · 2013-05-19 19:53 · Score: 2
  
  who knows where the OP came up with newts...
  Astronewts?
  
  --
  No left turn unstoned.
9. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 21:36 · Score: 1
  
  Some of them got better.
10. Re:No Amphibians Listed in Article by dywolf · 2013-05-20 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  I thought he thought he was a former congressman
  
  --
  The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Lets's get this out of the way by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 08:49 · Score: 0

I for one welcome our immortal space lizard overlods.
There. Now people can discuss freely.
Incredible! by Samantha+Wright · 2013-05-19 08:50 · Score: 5, Funny

Can you believe these animals survived? Who knows what they'll try next, maybe a dog or chimp! One day, humans might even be able to go into space!

--
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
1. Re:Incredible! by kurt555gs · 2013-05-19 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  A Jimp? No Senator, a Jimp, a Jimpanzee.
  
  --
  * Carthago Delenda Est *
2. Re:Incredible! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2013-05-19 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  One day, humans might even be able to go into space!
  One day, the IRS might even be able to go into space!
  One way.
  The newt was actually a human . . . he got better.
  
  --
  Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
3. Re:Incredible! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:42 · Score: 0
  
  A gimp.
4. Re: Incredible! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 20:44 · Score: 0
  
  man has actualy been living in space
I wonder by Hsien-Ko · 2013-05-19 09:29 · Score: 1

if you launch a thousand of octopi in a capsule far off... Would that spawn the Orz?
1. Re:I wonder by drinkypoo · 2013-05-19 11:17 · Score: 1
  
  I'm substantially more upset about the Mycon, who are occasionally hostile no matter what you say to them. Watch those spores...
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Science: Space Lizards Superior to Squishy Mammals by ZombieRoboNinja · 2013-05-19 09:35 · Score: 5, Funny

Another victory for the Cardassian Empire!
Just my intuition.... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:36 · Score: 0

....but the Fish and crayfish didn't survive then!
1. Re:Just my intuition.... by bradorsomething · 2013-05-19 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  ....but the Fish and crayfish didn't survive then!
  There's no information given about the chordates and arthropoda in question.
  
  That information might be classified.
2. Re:Just my intuition.... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 12:04 · Score: 1
  
  sadly, the water floated out of the gold fish bowl.
Capsule loading checklist by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 09:57 · Score: 1

Fewer than half of the 53 mice and other rodents who blasted off on April 19 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome survived the flight, Russian news agencies reported, quoting Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and the lead researcher. Sychov said this was to be expected and the surviving mice were sufficient to complete the study, which was designed to show the effects of weightlessness and other factors of space flight on cell structure. All 15 of the lizards survived, he said. The capsule also carried small crayfish and fish.

Capsule loading checklist:
Mice? Da!
Fish? Da!
Towel? Nyet.
The lack of towel obviously caused many mice to panic, and die!!!!! (apologies to THHGTTG)
Lizards on a Space Capsule by Livius · 2013-05-19 09:59 · Score: 2

Enough is enough! I have had it with these m____________ lizards on this m____________ space capsule!
1. Re:Lizards on a Space Capsule by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 10:30 · Score: 0
  
  Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking lizards on this motherfucking space capsule!
  FTFY
2. Re:Lizards on a Space Capsule by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 11:40 · Score: 0
  
  If you feel the need to self censor, you probably should just not say it. This is the internet, not fucking Sesame Street.
3. Re:Lizards on a Space Capsule by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 11:57 · Score: 0
  
  What possible, idiotic reasoning would go into self censoring yourself on the internet?
  You must be one hell of a self-righteous hypocrite (or a very subtle troll).
4. Re:Lizards on a Space Capsule by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 01:02 · Score: 0
  
  It's an oddity of North American media that polite content (music, TV shows, films) is often just the impolite content with the swearing/nudity/whatever blanked out. If he was born in the '90s that might be what he intuitively feels a reference to SOAP should "sound" like from years of exposure.
  'Cause obviously gangster rap is regular middle of the road drive-time music if you just mute out the swears.
5. Re:Lizards on a Space Capsule by omnichad · 2013-05-20 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe they despise profanity but couldn't resist the joke. I don't really enjoy it myself.
How many died of boredom vs bat'leth fights? by kfsone · 2013-05-19 10:37 · Score: 3, Funny

Also, given their skill in escapology, how many mice actually managed to make it off the ship?

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-- A change is as good as a reboot.
I misread this by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2013-05-19 10:39 · Score: 1

At first glance, I thought it said "Mice, Nerds Retrieved After a Month Orbiting Earth"...

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#DeleteChrome
1. Re:I misread this by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 11:13 · Score: 0
  
  They already know how a nerds cell structure changes in zero gravity. Some guy wrote a book about it.
Silver lining by Dunbal · 2013-05-19 11:10 · Score: 1

Half of them survived the trip, so you can feel good about it. No mention that these creatures have been/will be slaughtered for studying them "on a cellular level".

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Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
1. Re:Silver lining by cheater512 · 2013-05-19 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  You can't talk. You harmed seven puppies just to make a Slashdot post!
  These guys are actually doing real science from these deaths.
2. Re:Silver lining by Dunbal · 2013-05-19 11:40 · Score: 0
  
  Yup and I'm coming up on 9000 posts soon. Do the math! Actually I don't really harm any puppies, I just think it's a very politically INcorrect thing to say, because everyone loves puppies! Oh btw I have 2 dogs, a maltese and a miniature french poodle.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
3. Re:Silver lining by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 01:03 · Score: 0
  
  I don't think anyone's naive enough to think that research animals were going to be given medals and sent off to live with Buzz Aldrin in the astronaut retirement village.
Douglas Adams would say . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 11:18 · Score: 0

. . . The (surviving) mice were furious!
Newt in orbit by rossdee · 2013-05-19 11:36 · Score: 2

Didn't he want to found a moon colony by the end of his second term?
1. Re:Newt in orbit by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 19:48 · Score: 0
  
  Yes he did. I am just surprised that he's in any physical condition to travel into orbit. Last time I looked, he was carrying a lot of extra pounds. In addition, I am surprised that he went with mice. He usually prefers to be in the company of rats.
Re:Chinks? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-19 13:58 · Score: 1

the appropriate term is 'japonaught' or 'astronese'.

and chinks are chinese, you racist
Edges of Van Allen belts? by GodfatherofSoul · 2013-05-19 16:32 · Score: 2

A while back I found a good chart of radiation levels and from memory 300 miles up was the point where radiation levels were too high for permanent human occupation. I wonder if this was the cause...

--
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Lizards by Cant+use+a+slash+wtf · 2013-05-19 18:38 · Score: 1

Of course the lizards survived. How else do you think our glorious alien-lizard overlords survived the journey here?
WOMUMP by Rufty · 2013-05-19 23:29 · Score: 1

The Wortlethorpe MUnicipal Moon Program was putting mice on rockets decades ago - I read about this when I was a kid.

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It's just another Bion / Biocosmos flight. by Catmeat · 2013-05-20 01:07 · Score: 2

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bion_(satellite) It's the 12th in a series of missions that have been (infrequently) flown since the 70's.
What's the point by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-20 02:20 · Score: 0

So what's the point of this experiment, and what did they learn?
Simulated gravity...? by taiwanjohn · 2013-05-20 04:42 · Score: 1

When are they going to do some experiments with centrifugal simulated gravity?

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Reportedly the capsule name was "NIMH" by DarthVain · 2013-05-21 02:20 · Score: 1

I smell sequel!