They launched a satellite with geckos and insects onboard to observe their mating behavior in zero-g, then lost control of it. Now they've gotten control back. The headline is indeed surprisingly accurate.
I wonder if they plan on recovering the satellite and the geckos. Cameras are ok, but it would be much more useful to have a live sample of space-born geckos to research. Looking at the pictures of this thing, it looks like it might have non-destructive down-mass capabilities, but then I question whether the eggs will survive landing.
The end of the article says: "[Roscosmos] will have to wait until the satellite falls to Earth to know [what caused the communications interruption]." That sounds like they intend to de-orbit and recover the satellite to me. The real question is whether the geckos could survive re-entry. My guess is no.
An orbiting satellite with plants would be expensive because it would need climate control and a way to both protect against too much sun and radiation and at the same time allow some sun for growing the plants. You'd also have to find very specific bacteria, fungus, plants, and other organisms that could survive that kind of environment, if you miscalculated then the experiment would quickly fail and it would be a huge waste of money (because you can't bring the capsule back to earth to study what did/didn't survive and it would be hard to visibly see what failed with just a camera and misc sensors).
You can probably work with a NASA project to get something aboard the ISS (if you're very lucky) but you'd have to show how it could benefit them rather than it just being cool to do.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] threadThe idea of a mini-Earth orbiting Earth monitored by cameras and fed just enough filtered light fascinates me.
NASA has been doing gardening research aboard the ISS for years:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experimen... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/10-074.ht... http://www.gizmag.com/veggie/31613/
An orbiting satellite with plants would be expensive because it would need climate control and a way to both protect against too much sun and radiation and at the same time allow some sun for growing the plants. You'd also have to find very specific bacteria, fungus, plants, and other organisms that could survive that kind of environment, if you miscalculated then the experiment would quickly fail and it would be a huge waste of money (because you can't bring the capsule back to earth to study what did/didn't survive and it would be hard to visibly see what failed with just a camera and misc sensors).
You can probably work with a NASA project to get something aboard the ISS (if you're very lucky) but you'd have to show how it could benefit them rather than it just being cool to do.