10 Animals That Have Been To Space
From dogs to chimpanzees, animals were the early pioneers of space flight and they played pivotal roles in space exploration
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The first animal in space was launched in 1947 and surprisingly it was a fruit fly. As per BBC, the fruit flies travelled 109 km into the air aboard a ballistic missile
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The first great ape in space was Ham, a chimpanzee launched into space by NASA in 1961. He returned safely to Earth and lived until 1983
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The very first mouse went into space in 1950, reaching an altitude of 137 km
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A number of dogs have gone into space under the former Soviet Union. The most well-known was Laika in 1957
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The Russians launched the Zond 5 spaceship in 1968 with a capsule carrying samples of soil and seeds, and two steppe tortoises
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NASA launched the Orbiting Frog Olotith spacecraft, containing two bullfrogs, in 1970
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In 1973, two garden spiders were sent to the then US space station called Skylab to see if they could build webs in zero gravity
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The medaka fish, a freshwater fish native to southeast Asia, was sent into space in the 70s to see how microgravity impacts marine life
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In 2007, tardigrades, also known as water bears, were one of the first animals to survive outer space
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Nematodes, also known as roundworms, are one of the organisms that can claim to have been into outer space, and then to have successfully returned to Earth
Image: cdc.gov
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