Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum and Phooey

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Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum and Phooey are the nicknames of five silk pocket mice ( Perognathus longimembris ) that orbited the moon 75 times in 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission . The NASA gave the mice the identification numbers A3326, A3400, A3305, A3356 and A3352; their nicknames were given by the Apollo 17 crew, Eugene Cernan , Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans .

Mission history

The Apollo 17 command module on display at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston

Apollo 17 launched on December 7, 1972 and returned to Earth on December 19. During that flight, the Apollo command module, in which Evans and the five mice were, orbited the moon for six days and four hours while Cernan and Schmitt performed the final lunar excursions of the Apollo program. One of the mice (A3352) died during the trip for unknown reasons; the other four were killed and dissected on return to obtain biological information.

Evans and the five mice share two space flight records: the longest time living things have spent in orbit around the moon (147 hours and 43 minutes) and the most (75) orbits of the moon.

Radiation experiment

The mice were part of the “Biocore” experiment, in which the effect of cosmic rays on living things was to be investigated. The pocket mouse species was chosen because of its well-documented biological responses. The advantages of this species also include their small size, their ease of keeping in isolation (the animals did not require drinking water and pocket mice only produce highly concentrated excretions during the expected duration of the mission) and their proven ability to withstand environmental stresses.

The mice had radiation measuring devices implanted under the scalp to find out whether they would be harmed by the cosmic rays. Upon returning to Earth, the four living mice were killed and dissected, and although lesions were found in the scalp and liver, they did not appear to have a common cause and were not believed to have been caused by cosmic rays. No damage was found in the retina or the bowels of the mice. At the time of the Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report, the animals' brains had not yet been studied, but subsequent studies showed no significant impact of spaceflight on the brains of the mice.

See also

  • Zond 5 , a circumlunar voyage of two turtles and various small plants and insects in September 1968 as part of the Soviet space program. They were the first and only other non-human life forms to both fly near the moon and return safely .
  • Jack and the Beanstalk , the eponymous part of the English fairy tale

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Colin Burgess, Chris Dubbs: Animals in Space: From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle . Springer Science & Business Media, July 5, 2007, ISBN 9780387496788 , p. 320 (accessed May 4, 2016).
  2. ^ A b Webb Haymaker, Bonne C. Look, Eugene V. Benton, Richard C. Simmonds: The Apollo 17 Pocket Mouse Experiment (Biocore) . In: Richard S. Johnston, Charles A. Berry, Lawrence F. Dietlein (Eds.): SP-368 Biomedical Results of Apollo (SP-368) . Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Jan 1, 1975, OCLC 1906749 .
  3. ↑ Apollo 17 on the NASA website
  4. ↑ a b c d Bailey. OT: 26th Biocore Experiment . In: Apollo 17 Preliminary Science Report (NASA SPP-330) 1973.