Wednesday, September 02, 2009

A stepping stone to the green cheese

SPACE.com -- Mouse Hotel Opens on Space Station

Hey, why isn't this getting more publicity? The current shuttle trip to the International Space Station has delivered a half dozen rodent residents who will stay there for 3 months:
The mice are living in a special experiment drawer delivered to the station late Sunday by astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. The drawer is split into partitions to give each mouse ample living room.

"Each mouse is in its own little compartment," Robinson told SPACE.com. "The compartments have screens around them so the mice can hold on with their feet so that they're in control of their environment...so they're not stressed out."

It is hard to imagine how a little mouse brain reacts to permanent weightlessness. Do they just cling motionless to the screens for the first 48 hours thinking "what the hell?"

NASA must have video of mice in space already:
Mice have flown in space countless times before, even on space shuttles headed for the International Space Station. But the critters always stayed aboard those shuttles and returned home, said NASA's space station program scientist Julie Robinson. The longest any mouse has lived in space has been about 30 days, and that was while flying on an unmanned satellite, she added.
However, the only video I could find on the 'net is from a 1950's science fiction film, where they view what appears to be real footage of mice having a parabolic ride on a missile. As expected, the mice looked somewhat alarmed.

We can only hope that one or more of them will escape during their sojourn on the ISS. That would gain a lot of publicity for NASA.

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