Russia has just released all planned missions through 2029, and they include sending monkeys to Mars in 2017 and a women-only crew to the Moon by 2029. Roscosmos recently announced a partnership with the European Space Agency for the Luna-17 project, which will send a probe to the moon to look for ice water in the dark side of the satellite by 2020. In addition to this project, the agency has announced a plan to send a team of trained rhesus monkeys to Mars.
Currently, there is a team of monkeys being trained three hours a day at Mosow’s Institute of Biomedical Problems, learning how to operate controls and solve simple math problems. This is not a new phenomenon, animals have a long and perilous relationship with spaceflight. In the early days of the space race, fruit flies, mice, chimps and dogs were sent into space to see if they could survive missions of varying lengths of time.
A spokesperson commented that they hope to use the monkeys to further the space travel effort. In other news, a team of women-only is currently in training to be the first all-female crew to walk the moon. If they survive their mock capsule test, the six Russian women will be the first to visit the satellite.
