Dear jakze-ga;
I couldn't find much about US involvment of late but take a look at
these and tell me if they answer your question...
Aside from the instances you have efficiently noted, I found this
experiment conducted by China in 2001 as reported by CNN that appears
to be the most recent expeirment:
“The secretive Chinese space agency announced details about the flight
only after the capsule landed 21 hours later in a remote region of
Inner Mongolia…In 2001, the center launched Shenzhou II into orbit
with several small animals including a monkey, dog and rabbit as
passengers on board… The menagerie returned unharmed one week later,
according to Chinese media reports.”
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/03/25/china.launch/
Now of course, China and other similarly governed nations are
traditionally very strict with regard to matters pertaining to their
infrastructure. Rarely does such information become public and when it
does there is no infallible means of authenticating it. In like
fashion, here is another news story from CNN in 1996 that provides
some details of an experiment conducted by Russia (financed jointly by
Russia, France and the United States) involving monkeys and
weightlessness. Animal rights activists three a huge fit when they
learned what the experiment involved and naturally the practice came
into question:
“The monkeys are traveling with newts, snails, flies, bugs, plants,
seeds and bacteria.”
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9612/26/space.monkeys/
It doesn’t really qualify, but just for the sake of levity I’ll throw
this in: In 1998, recycled astronaut John Glenn took aboard the space
shuttle Discovery a collection of “sea monkeys” – you know, the little
water borne creatures? Oh well, maybe is wasn’t so funny, but it does
happen to be true:
“The experiment tested for differences between Sea Monkey eggs that
went to space and those that never left Earth. One batch of eggs spent
nine days in orbit on the Discovery and were hatched eight weeks after
their return--the results showed no differences between both groups.”
SPACEKIDS
http://www.spacekids.com/missions/seamonkeys_000714.html
Now, back to serious business; if there are monkeys in space as of
this writing there does not appear to be any news briefs on it. As
with many experiments of the past, little is usually made available to
the press until some time after the experiment is over. Presumably
this is because of the nature of the tests and the problems that arise
with animal rights proponents.
On the other hand, I did find some information that implies that there
are future flights involving monkeys that you might find interesting.
Ironically, it comes from an animal rights group that monitors such
activity:
“Russia has put six teams of two monkeys into orbit in previous
missions. On the most recent, BION-11, was to find out how two weeks
in space changed muscle and bone structure…Yet both NASA and BION want
to resume exposing non-human primates to this suffering, and insist it
is essential in order to fully understand whet happens to the human
body under weightless conditions.”
UNCAGED (dated 07/04/99, well after the BION flights of 1996-1997)
http://www.uncaged.co.uk/news12.htm#spac
regards;
tutuzdad-ga |
