By Alan Boyle
Why did Russian scientists put those ill-fated geckos inside a satellite? The point wasn't to make kinky gecko-sex videos in zero-G, but to learn more about the challenges that humans might face as they travel to destinations beyond Earth — and start raising the first truly space-born generation.
"Reproduction in space is a long-term goal that people would want to meet," Ruth Globus, rodent research project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, told NBC News. "Even if people were to say, 'We don't care about the long term, we only care about now,' it's important to understand what's happening to the ovaries and the testes [in the space environment], and the subsequent changes that may occur."
Russia's Foton-M4 experiment was aimed at furthering that basic understanding: The five geckos in the satellite (one male and four females) were just one part of the package. The mission sent other organisms, including mushrooms and fruit flies, into orbit for a month and a half to study how they propagated in the absence of gravity.
Despite what Internet wags may say, the sex wasn't what killed the geckos: Russian sources suggested that something went wrong with thermal control system inside the Foton-M4 satellite, causing the lizards to freeze to death. In contrast, the flies survived and successfully bred, according to Russia's space agency.
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