Five animal related facts about space so that I can share a picture of Charlie too, for his biggest fan Shalini 😊

1. Several monkeys were used in flight and space trials that did not end well. In 1959 – 10 years before Apollo 11 – a rhesus monkey named Abel and a Squirrel monkey named Baker became the first to successfully return to Earth after a 16 minute space flight. A total of 32 monkeys have been involved in space flights.

2. After humans successfully landed on the moon, animals were still part of the biological payload of missions even though they received less attention.

3. The record for dogs in space is held by the Russian dogs, Veterok and Ugolyok who orbited Earth for 22 days in 1966.

4. In 1973 two European garden spiders named Arabella and Anita spun webs aboard NASA’s Skylab for 59 days.

5. Additional varieties of animal life have been sent into space including cats, a tortoise, mice, frog eggs, and worms.