In the past we had numerous astronauts, cosmonauts and other spaceman
in orbit and even going to the moon. This is a small number of
people who have challenged the endeavor going to space, but a
numerous sort of lifeforms have also traveled to space, and I'm
not talking about algae or bacteria here, which every human
carries to space automatically. I'm talking about
predestined liveforms that were used to determine the effects
of the cosmic environment and especially of cosmic radiation.
You're thinking of mice now, right ? No, the lifeforms I'm
talking about are aquatic lifeforms, namely brine shrimp,
the Artemia ssp. (=Artemia super species).
Those incredible animals are not only coping with extreme
environmental conditions on Earth, but also in space.
Eggs of that shrimp genus can survive temperatures as
low as minus 270 degrees Centigrade, a total vacuum
and total lack of oxygen for a long period of time.
Therefore the total lack of inhabitable conditions
required for humans and other higher lifeforms is not
a problem for the eggs (in scientific literature cited
as "cysts") at all. Also total dryness is not a problem
for the Artemia eggs, since also those eggs need a period
of time to get total dryness to complete development.
For those reasons mentioned previously, Artemia ssp. was
chosen to fly on many space missions like as Russian
missions, Apollo missions and also on Space Shuttle
missions.
Artemia were flown on various missions, such as the Soviet
biosatellites Cosmos 782 (Biobloc SF1), Cosmos 1129 (Biobloc 4),
the American Moon missions Apollo 16 and 17, and the Space
Shuttle missions STS-37 and STS-43 - just to name a few.
The Biostack experiment basically
consisted of several layers of organic-matter (e.g. Artemia
salina eggs) and plastic. The plastic was etched later on to
determine, if high energy heavy ion (cosmic ray - space radiation)
impacted. Those tracks were used to determine affected organic
matter, e.g. which Artemia eggs were hit by cosmic rays.
"Only ten percent of the Artemia salina eggs hit [by a cosmic
ray heavy ion] developed to a swimming larvae, compared to 90
percent of the ground controls and 45 percent of the non-hit
flight controls. The larvae derived from hit eggs had a high
mortality. Only a few reached maturity, and none was completely
normal in further growth and behavior. They never reached the
normal 12-mm length and pair mating was reached retardedly."
Reference: H. Bücker
BIOSTACK-A STUDY OF THE BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF HZE GALACTIC COSMIC RADIATION
http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/apollo/S4ch1.htm
For any Mars mission we still think that cosmic rays are a
danger, and I can just admit that. But!, we can omit those
obstacles and can go to Mars. Yes, we can go to Mars!
There are technological matters to overcome those obstacles,
and we're able to land on the Mars, not for just scientific
reasons, but also for ensuring the survival of mankind.
And that reason for landing on Mars is one of the best
I can imagine to do such a mission. No matter what it
takes. We need to find a solution to human survival on
any Planet, on Earth or any other Plantet or Moon!
