A recent experiment brought an answer that could change everything. After a 14-day mission aboard the Chinese Space Station Tiangong, a female mouse returned to Earth, became pregnant and gave birth to nine babies.
healthy and although at first glance it may seem simple, the practice is one of the most important tests ever carried out for the future of life in space.
The four mice sent on the Chinese Shenzhou 21 mission were used to study how mammals react to extreme conditions of microgravity and radiation. During that period they faced unexpected challenges. The mission schedule had to be altered by space debris, which left the animals isolated with limited resources. A true race against time began.
Teams on the ground and astronauts improvised solutions to keep them alive, using the station's own systems to supply liquids. Feeding turned to an unusual alternative, soy milk, before using it, rapid tests were done and mice on Earth to ensure it was safe, meanwhile, an artificial intelligence system monitored every behavior of the animals in real time, from feeding to resting patterns.
Even with all those challenges, they survived and more than that, they reproduced, after returning to Earth, one of the females gave birth to a healthy chamber with offspring showing great vitality, this indicates something extremely important, the short-term space missions, at least in this case, did not compromise the reproductive capacity of mammals and that opens a huge door, because if life can continue, then the human presence outside the Earth stops being just a visit and begins to approach something permanent.
Now researchers want to go further, they seek to understand if these offspring descended from animals that passed through space will have any alterations throughout their lives and above all if they will be able to reproduce normally, if life can begin to take its first steps outside of Earth, our technology also needs to accompany that movement.
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