In the future, China plans to send zebrafish to the space station. A small fish species will be sent into orbit by China’s Tiangong space station as part of a study on the interaction between fish and microorganisms in a small closed ecosystem. informs Guancha.cn from Shanghai. The experiment will also help study bone loss in astronauts.

Zhang Wei, deputy commander of China’s manned space engineering space system, briefed the Chinese media about the plan during a space station science and application workshop in Beijing on July 10. More information about the experiment’s time frame and water apparatus was not disclosed.

It’s not the first time fish have been sent into space. NASA Aquatic Habitat in 2012 or AQHwas designed to study how microgravity affects marine life. Here lived a small flock of medaka, a small freshwater fish native to Japan.

Aquatic Habitat, or AQH, is a facility of the Japan Space Agency that allows the study of fish aboard the International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA)

Danio fish or Danio rerio has been there before. Sent to the Soviet Union In 1976, with the Soyuz 21 mission to the Salyut 5 space station, Soviet cosmonauts experimenting with fish discovered that zebrafish change some of their behavior in response to living in microgravity.

Meanwhile, sending animals into space It dates back to 1947, before the Soviet space dog Laika made its much more famous flight on Satellite 2 in 1957. Laika tragically overheated and died just hours after the flight. Source