In the words of fictional character Doug Quaid of the original Total Recall film, “Get your ass to Mars”. By modern standards, the story and special effects were quite poor, however the concept of a well embedded colony on Mars was enticing.
In the movie, the Martian colony was a poor cousin to Earth and the people living there, oppressed and living in a world of iniquity. I didn’t see many animals in that movie.
But a key, later success factor for a Martian colony would be the transport of animals to Mars in some way. A logical start could be the common animals which often migrate or are carried onboard with humans when they travel to other places: dogs and cats.
However, there is a significant challenge here: how do you move animals in microgravity?
Animals have been sent to space before, with Russian hero Laika being the first dog, indeed first animal sent to space, ahead of the chimp missions. Unfortunately most of these animals died up there, however we did gain some insight about how to safely stow and transport these animals.
The big take-away from such experiments, which ran all the way from the 1940s aboard V2 rockets, was that a great host of different animals can, at least in the short term, survive in space. The other side to these animal models was that they offered the test of capsule recovery systems, parachute deployment, etc. Many animals specifically lost their lives through this pathway.
As with humans, the long-term survivability of animals in space is likely good, certainly within the Earth's magnetic field. The difficulty comes when we move out of that protection toward Mars with a much reduced, effectively null field strength. Additionally, the manner of how to keep the animals like dogs, cats in a decent, humane condition on a 6 month zero gravity transit is something that needs to be explored.
The opportunity to learn about physiology in space exposure is so great that mice have been regularly used as a model in space experiments onboard the ISS. The Rodent Research Hardware System has been in use since 2014. This is a method to safely transport the animals to Space for analysis under different experimental conditions.
Of course, because animal droppings, urine and fur particles pose a significant health risk to humans, this Hardware System ensures that the rodents are trapped inside their own life support system within the ISS. This ensures that the humans are not contaminated by rodent waste.
Such a method may need to be used for larger animals for Mars transport. Furthermore, to prevent pests and wiring integrity risks at the colonies, it will be imperative that such rodents are kept sealed away in their own 'quarters'.
Some insights from this programme include:
- physiology of aging and the effect of age on disease progression using groups of young and old mice
- impact of the space environment on the gut microbiota of mice
- the impact of a novel therapeutic drug delivery chip in microgravity
The solution may not be to send any actual animals at all, and rather instead to send artificial gestation equipment and frozen embryos or a genetic printer to prepare the animals from software genetic code, live on the surface.
Such technology has been proven in Mice gestation during early phase tests March 2021 in Mice in Israel. The concept being that, in the short term, such technology could be used to help premature babies mature in an artificial womb and so avoid, or at least attenuate the harmful effects of early birth.
You can reach me on Twitter: @Ronnie_Writes
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