Snipfact:

  On 1 February 2003, space shuttle Columbia STS-107 broke up on re-entry and its crew were killed. On-board animal experiments involving silkworms, spiders, carpenter bees, harverster ants and Japanese killfish were destroyed, but amazingly, canisters of worms were found alive.

  The STS-90 mission of space shuttle Columbia (April/May 1998) contained the Neurolab –a space menagerie with 170 baby rats, 18 mice, 229 swordtail fish, 135 snails, four oyster toad fish and 1,514 cricket eggs and larvae.

  Arabella, a garden spider went to the US Skylab-3 in July 1973. She spent almost 60 days in orbit in an experiment to test the effect of weightlessness on her web-weaving skills.

  In November 1970, the USA’s Orbiting Frog Otolith satellite (OFO-A) launched two bullfrogs into built for a week. In December 1990. Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese journalist, took six green three frogs to the Soviet Mir space station to conduct weightlessness experiments.

  Able, a female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a female squirrel monkey, were launched by the USA in may 1959. They did not orbit and successfully returned to Earth. In November 1961 Enos, a male chimpanzee, completed two orbits and survived. The USSR’s first space primates were monkeys Abrek and Bion, who orbited in December 1983 in one of  a series of Bion satellite experiments.

  <strong>The Space Race </strong> Laika, the dog traveling aboard Russia's Sputnik 2, becomes the first mammal in space, raising the bar in the Space Race, which sparked billions of dollars in aerospace research spending." border="0" alt="<h2>1957</h2> <strong>The Space Race </strong> Laika, the dog traveling aboard Russia's Sputnik 2, becomes the first mammal in space, raising the bar in the Space Race, which sparked billions of dollars in aerospace research spending." src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSePVEd8CTii6rKwMoVUFUzNAuChyphenhyphen6CWVND6zOqZoF_MziSk5ipwqjAcIGD_abVNyOAxk31DdTLcG0PrqHPjG5fZaonguQ7KmO5rEe10lJfPa6UfELUeXDqBJyoUsEa2AHLFEVi_ViSC9J/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="167"> Laika, a female Samoyed husky, became the first animal in orbit after being launched by the USSR in Sputnik 2 in November 1957. There was no way to bring her down a...

  Before humans went into space animals were used to test equipment to be sent up in a rocket – but not into space – was Albert 1, a male rhesus monkey, in 1948. He and his successor, Albert 2, died during the tests. However , on September 1951, a monkey and 11 mice were recovered after a launch in a US Aerobee rocket. Many further animal experiments were carried out before the first manned space flight.