• Question: Can you get a space suit for any animal?????????????????? If you cant, which animals have actually been in space or been on the moon?

    Asked by harrysa to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by jess4coop, fishofdestiny, balletshoes1998.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      You should be able to make an animal space suit, just a question of tailoring it right! The animal probably wouldn’t like it though, they aren’t very comfortable.
      The best bet would be a pet biosuit like they are developing at MIT http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit/

      We have had this question a lot and thought it was mainly chimps and dogs (probably because they’re intelligent – they we actually trained to press buttons and flick levers).

      But look it up a surprising amount of different animals have been in space;

      The first ones were fruit flies
      Then a rhesus monkey
      Then a mouse
      Then dogs
      Then squirrel monkeys
      A rabbit (!)
      Guinea pigs
      Frogs
      Rats
      Cats
      Wasps
      Beetles
      A tortoise!
      Worms
      Fish
      Stick insects
      Newts
      Chicken eggs
      Snails
      Sea urchins
      Moths
      Spiders
      Ants
      Butterflies

      So maybe animals are secretly beating us humans in the space race!

      PS. The first aeronautical animals were a sheep, rooster and duck sent up on a balloon by the Montgolfiere brothers!

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I have nothing scientific to add to this, but I found this picture. 😀

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      I bet Wikipedia has some great information about animals in space. It’s not something I’ve thought about much…. Yes an entire page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_space enjoy (sometimes in science knowing where to look is as good as knowing – although usually slower!).

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