NASA is looking to launch rats as astronauts to the International Space Station.
The goal is to send the rats to the ISS as early as this year, according to CBS News. The space agency has used rodents on missions before, though for shorter missions that only lasted for a week or two. The new mission, however, is planned to last between 30 and 90 days, depending on whether NASA has the right equipment.
Julie Robinson, NASA's chief scientists for the ISS, said in a recent press conference that changes will need to be made to ensure the rats are healthy and enjoy the trip.
"This will allow animals to be studied for longer periods of time on space station missions," she said.
Robinson added that NASA prefers to send rats on missions over mice because rats have neurocognitive functions that are more similar to humans, FOX News reported.
The space agency also plans to send other small critters in space, such as fruit flies. Marshall Porterfield, director of the space life and physical science division at NASA's Washington, D.C. HQ, said about 700 of the 900 known genes for human disease are found in fruit flies. Scientists also used the flies in experiments on Earth due to their short lifetimes, which lets scientists find changes over multiple generations.
"The space station is the perfect laboratory for these long-term types of study experiments," Porterfield said.
NASA has already been working on several experiments to study the impacts of microgravity on living organisms, such as the Veg-01, or "Veggie," test, which focuses on the odds of growing lettuce and other crops for space colonization in the future, Tech Times reported.
No schedule has been made for the rat mission, which NASA said depends on the timing of flights to the Dragon capsule, which always has limited cargo space. The rats will join 200 other experiments that are going on right now during the spacecraft's Expedition 40 mission.
