Russia tests monkeys for Mars trip

BBC News reports that Russia is planning to send monkeys to Mars.

The BBC News report "Russia tests monkeys for Mars trip" can be seen at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7341211.stm

It says:
Today Russia is one of the few countries where experiments on primates are carried out.

"Humanity sacrifices more than 100 million animals a year in the name of health and beauty. It's time to think of an alternative to experiments with animals," says Andrei Zbarsky of the international nature conservation group WWF.

Radio Amateurs are currently building the first private-venture spacecraft to go to Mars.

Due for launch in 2011 the spacecraft will initialy swing by Venus in order to gain velocity before heading for the Red Planet where it will orbit Mars and send down a payload to the surface.

The spacecraft will use the Amateur Satellite 2.4 GHz and 10 GHz allocations.

For further information on the Amateur Radio P5A Mars Orbiter see http://www.go-mars.de/ and http://ticket-to-mars.org/

AMSAT-DL
http://www.amsat-dl.org/