The More You Know ★
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First cat in space: how a Parisian stray called Félicette was blasted far from Earth
Tortoises have been put in orbit round the moon; thousands of jellyfish were once flown on a space shuttle; and in 1973, two garden spiders, Anita and Arabella, were taken to the Skylab orbiting laboratory to see if they could spin webs in microgravity. (They could but the webs were unevenly shaped, scientists found.)
“In the 60s, scientists and engineers were primarily concerned about how dangerous it might be for a human to be in a capsule in outer space, and most animal space flights were undertaken to see if they suffered or their lives were threatened by the weightlessness or increased radiation or other effects they might experience up there,” said astronomer Jake Foster at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.