Chinese scientists plan to send monkeys to Tiangong space station for the purpose of conducting a reproductive experiment using animals. The proposal is to analyze whether they can reproduce outside the earth’s environment. This was reported by the portal South China Morning Post.
According to Zhang Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and one of the leaders of the study, the experiment will be conducted in Wentian, the largest module on the space station, used primarily for life science experiments. The Chinese laboratory has already analyzed smaller living things such as algae, fish and snails.
“There will be some research done on mice and monkeys to see how they grow or even reproduce in space. These experiments will help improve our understanding of the body’s adaptation to microgravity and other space environments,” Zhang said.
Kehkui Kee, a professor at the Tsinghua University School of Medicine, led the orbital stem cell experiment conducted by Chinese astronauts. The complexity of a life science experiment in space increases exponentially with the size of the animals used, he says.
“The astronauts will need to feed them and deal with the waste they generate,” Key said.
negative answers
Larger animals, especially great apes, have much in common with humans, and the possibility human reproduction in space This is a question that has been questioned for decades.
Although the monkeys that will be sent into space were lab-bred and live in cages, prolonged confinement in a small space can cause some negative reactions, such as reduced activity, hair pulling, or refusal to eat. In addition, flying a rocket to a space station can also scare animals.
“On the floor, you can calm a frightened monkey with toys, song or just let them mingle with other monkeys. How to take care of them, make them happy and comfortable, will be a new challenge for astronauts,” said the expert, whose name was not disclosed.
Mice had sex in space
During the Cold War, scientists in the former Soviet Union managed to get some mice to overcome physical difficulties and have sex during an 18-day space flight. Some of the females showed signs of pregnancy, but none of them gave birth after returning to Earth.
The researchers suspected that prolonged exposure to cosmic rays, which are hundreds of times stronger in orbit than on Earth, could degrade the quality of sperm and eggs.
Some ground-based experiments have also shown that the absence of gravity can damage the testicles and some other reproductive organs, leading to a significant decrease in sex hormone levels in the animals analyzed.
couple in space
space shuttle Try, United States, took a pair of Ian Davis and Mark Lee to international space station (ISS) in 1992. But NASA says no astronaut is known to have had sex in space.
“Firstly, it is difficult to just be in close contact with each other in zero gravity. In addition, there is the problem of lack of privacy on shuttles and spacecraft, since there are no rooms in which two people can be indefinitely. alone,” said Adam Watkins, assistant professor of reproductive and developmental physiology at the University of Nottingham, UK, in a 2020 letter to Physiology News Magazine.
In any case, long-term health monitoring data collected on the ISS showed that testosterone levels dropped closer to launch or reentry, but the readings remained normal for most of the time the astronauts were in orbit.
Another NASA experiment on the ISS showed that changes in gravity and radiation had little effect on human sperm.
