China to send Monkey to its space station for testing reproduction in space

“Some studies involving mice and macaques will be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space. These experiments will help improve our understanding of an organism’s adaptation to microgravity and other space environments,” Zhang Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying by SCMP.

Chinese Academy of Sciences is leading the project and will also acquire sophisticated scientific equipment required for the tests in such conditions. The project is expected to be conducted on the Wentian module which was launched earlier this year.

The Tianhe, Wentian, and Mengtian lab modules of the space station provide it with the basic T-shape structure. After the docking of the final lab, China is ready to conduct tests in its own long-term permanent presence beyond Earth’s orbit.

China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has set a goal of more than 1,000 experiments to be conducted in fields ranging from technical spheres to medical science. The agency has also received application requests from many other countries and currently has around 9 international space experiments which will be launched to the Tiangong Space Station, which is 388.9 kilometers above the Earth.

In September this year, two Chinese astronauts working in the Tiangong Space Station also went on their second spacewalk for the project and installed pumps, a handle to open the hatch door from outside in an emergency, and a foot-stop to fix an astronaut’s feet to a robotic arm, on the station.

The design of the Wentian module will be expanded to fit large organisms as currently, it has space to adjust only the small organisms like algae, fish, or snails.