Mouse Hotel Opens on Space Station

A team of six intrepid mice is going where no rodents have gone before: The International Space Station.

The small rodents are part of an Italian study investigating the effects of bone loss in space, and researchers have set the mice up in orbital style.

"Basically, it's a little hotel," said Joe Delai, Discovery's payload manager, of the cages holding the space mice. "They have a room and a place to eat and sleep."

That creature comfort is key, he said. After all, the little mice will be living in space for at least three months before hitching a ride back home.

Mice have flown in space countless times before, even on space shuttles headed for the International Space Station. But the critters always stayed aboard those shuttles and returned home, said NASA's space station program scientist Julie Robinson. The longest any mouse has lived in space has been about 30 days, and that was while flying on an unmanned satellite, she added.

"This is a brand new technology for carrying rodents into space," Robinson said of the mouse enclosure. "This will be, by far, the longest period of time that mice have been maintained in the space station environment in an experimental setting."

Mouse house in space

The mice are living in a special experiment drawer delivered to the station late Sunday by astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. The drawer is split into partitions to give each mouse ample living room.

"Each mouse is in its own little compartment," Robinson told SPACE.com. "The compartments have screens around them so the mice can hold on with their feet so that they're in control of their environment...so they're not stressed out."

The mice get food and water through automated systems, which astronauts can refill when needed. A different system turns on lights to simulate day and night, and cameras will monitor their progress, Robinson said.

"We take good care of them," she added. link...