Four mice, two males and two females, returned to Earth safe and well after a five-day stay in China’s Tiangong space station, a new milestone for China’s space exploration involving live rodent mammals.
Delivered to the orbiting space station on a cargo spacecraft on November 1, the four black mice, which are believed to be able to better adapt to space conditions physically than white mice, provided Chinese scientists with valuable data about how mice respond and adapt to weightlessness in an enclosed space.
The four mice are now undergoing follow-up experiments with another four mice in a control group. According to Li Tianda, an associate researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in charge of the mice experiments, they aim to establish a full process for in-orbit scientific experiments related to mammals and test key technologies on raising and doing experiments on mice in space.
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