Ark in Orbit

Surveyor's dramatic recovery overshadowed another space venture involving 1,000 vinegar gnats, 1,000 flour beetles, 560 wasps, 120 frog eggs, 875 amoebae, 13,000 bacteria cells, 78 wheat seedlings, nine pepper plants, 10 million spores of orange bread mold and 64 blue spiderwort. All this was packed aboard a space ark called Biosatellite 2 and launched into earth orbit from Cape Kennedy.

Designed to test the effects of weightlessness on living organisms, the temperature-controlled Biosatellite was stabilized in orbit to provide less than 1/100,000th of the earth's gravity for its tiny occupants. It also was equipped with a strontium 85 source that irradiated some of the organisms with gamma rays to determine whether the effects of radiation were different under weight less conditions.

Although it will take several months to discover the full impact of the space trip on Biosatellite's passengers, some of the results were immediately evident after the parachuting capsule had been plucked from the air over the Pacific by a C-130 recovery plane. Dartmouth Botanist Charles J. Lyon took a look at Bio-satellite's wheat seedlings and found that they had germinated, sending out roots and sprouts that were normal in form but sprawling in unusual directions be cause of the lack of gravity. North American Aviation Plant Physiologist Samuel Johnson opened the pepper plant packages and found their leaves folded down and turned under. "This is astounding," he said. "It shows that gravity really controls the orientation of a plant to a much greater extent than I had anticipated." And to Biologist Rudolph Mattoni, in charge of the bacteria experiment, there were "very, very preliminary indications that the stuff in space grew better and to a greater density than the same stuff on earth."

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