Kosmos 605


Kosmos 605, or Bion No.1, was a Bion satellite. Kosmos 605 was the first of eleven satellites Bion.

Launch and mission

Kosmos 605 was launched by a Soyuz-U rocket flying from Site 43/3 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union. The satellite was initially launched in a low Earth orbit with a perigee of and a apogee with an orbital inclination of 62.8 degrees. The spacecraft orbited the Earth for 21 days until their biological capsule returned to Earth on 22 November 1973 in a region of northwestern present-day Kazakhstan.
It carried several dozen male rats, six Russian tortoises , a mushroom bed, flour beetles in various stages of their life cycle, and living bacterial spores. It provided data on the reaction of mammal, reptile, insect, fungal, and bacterial forms to prolonged weightlessness.

Results

After returning, the animals found several functional changes, such as decreased body temperature, difficulty breathing, muscle atrophy, decreased bone mechanical strength and decreased mass of some internal organs and glands. No pathological changes were found. 3-4 weeks after landing, most of these changes receded and the animals returned to normal. In the experiment, for the first time, a second generation of insects was obtained whose weightlessness was developed. No differences were detected between the second and the first generation.
The influence of space conditions on the development of fungi was also found. Growing up in a weightless state, they created a very thin and extremely bent leg and a more massive mycelium than on Earth.
Kosmos 605 also tested means of protection against ionizing radiation.