MOSCOW, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) — The descent module of Russia’s Bion-M No. 2 biosatellite carrying live organisms landed safely in the steppes of the Orenburg region after a 30-day mission in space, Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos said on Friday.
The spacecraft, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Aug. 20, returned to Earth carrying biological samples, including live animals and plants. The organisms will be transported to Moscow for further study.
The Bion-M No. 2 project is designed to study how living organisms endure spaceflight in high-latitude orbits, where the level of cosmic radiation is about one-third higher than that on the International Space Station’s orbit.
On board the 6.4-ton satellite were 75 male mice, around 1,500 fruit flies, cell cultures, plants, grain and legume samples, as well as technical crops. Also included were fungi, lichens, cellular materials, and seeds derived from plants whose parent seeds had previously been sent into space on Bion-M No. 1 in 2013 and Foton-M No. 4 in 2014.
The Bion program is a series of Russian spacecraft dedicated to biological research, focusing on the effects of radiation and weightlessness on living organisms. The first satellite in this line, Kosmos-605, was launched in 1973. The first Bion-M satellite was launched in 2013, carrying mice, Mongolian gerbils, geckos, snails, plants and various microorganisms into space. ■