NASA is using monkey business to get humans to Mars.
The space agency is beefing up its space-radiation studies with controversial new experiments in Long Island using monkeys as subjects for the first time in decades, according to the Discovery News.
NASA has long used lab mice and rats to test radiation, but is turning to monkeys in the new tests because scientists say they must be carried out on animals more similar to humans.
The study will rely on 18 to 28 squirrel monkeys that will be exposed to low doses of the type of radiation astronauts traveling to Mars can expect to encounter. The goal is to understand how the radioactive environment of space affects humans during long-term travel.
“We realized there was a need for this kind of work,” Harvard Medical School behavior pharmacologist Jack Bergman, who is running the study, told Discovery News. “There’s a longstanding commitment on the part of NASA to deep-space travel, and with that commitment comes a need for knowing what kinds of adverse effects deep-space travel might have, what are the risks to astronauts.”
Animal-rights groups are furious over the tests.
“NASA’s radiation experiments on these sensitive, intelligent primates mark the beginning of another unfortunate chapter in the agency’s long history of abusing our fellow earthlings in order to explore its seemingly endless list of trivial curiosities about outer space,” said Justin Goodman, a research supervisor with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Goodman said dozens of chimpanzees were killed as “crash test dummies” by NASA in the 1950s to test missiles, helmets and windshields.
“Radiating monkeys will not tell scientists anything about how humans will respond to radiation in space, but it speaks volumes about humans’ callous attitude towards animals on our own planet,” he added.
Scientists are particularly interested in how radiation affects monkeys’ central nervous systems and behaviors over time. The monkeys are trained on a variety of behavioral tasks, so the tests will show how radiation exposure impacts performance.
The tests will take place at NASA’s Space Radiation Laboratory at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.
The monkeys will not be killed but could require lengthy medical care following the study.
NASA in the past has sent primates into space, but the missions were usually suborbital flights to assess risks of launch and microgravity.
The space agency relied on two chimpanzees to test the Mercury spacecraft.