The brave astronaut geckos launched into space back on July 18 by Roscosmos have perished.

The Russian space agency sent the lizards into orbit on a two-month joint Russian/German scientific mission to study sexual reproduction in zero-gravity. The craft containing the four female geckos and one should-have-been very lucky male gecko returned on Monday, September 1. But Roscosmos confirms that all five of these sex geckos died.

Shortly after its launch, Roscosmos lost contact with the spacecraft. Contact was restored six days later, but it is unclear whether life support systems were disrupted during that period, or if the geckos survived that dark period.

Early reports claimed that the geckos were found frozen and mummified, indicating that they had been dead for at least a week. But The Moscow Times reports that the study’s lead scientist, Sergei Savelyev, denies that claim. He instead asserts that the geckos likely died just two or three days prior to their return to Earth. “The poor things died within a few hours of each other,” he adds.

The poor geckos were accompanied by other test subjects, including fruit flies. However, these fruit flies fared better than the unfortunate lizards. The fruit flies had lots of sex, and lived to tell about it.

It’s sad to see that animals are continually used as test subjects, especially when it comes to sex. There are countless human subjects willing to volunteer themselves for out-of-this-world sex experiments.

Leading space news website Space.com even sells a popular T-shirt that proudly states, “Available to Populate Mars.” With the impending colonization of space, it’s important to figure out the complications of space sex. But the best way to learn about how space affects human reproduction is to conduct human sex experiments. And humans can willingly sign up to participate, unlike the unfortunate geckos who lost their lives in the name of sex science.

 

Photo: Domenico Salvagnin