КОМПЛЕКСНАЯ ОЦЕНКА СОСТОЯНИЯ ЖИВОТНЫХ ПРИ МОДЕЛИРОВАНИИ УСЛОВИЙ СОДЕРЖАНИЯ В ПОЛЕТЕ КОСМИЧЕСКОГО АППАРАТА «БИОН-М2» ПРИ РАЗЛИЧНЫХ ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНЫХ РЕЖИМАХ КОРМЛЕНИЯ

Abstract

One of the major approaches to studying spaceflight effects on living systems is flying experimental with animals. IBMP is developing scientific equipment for experiments with animals on spacecraft BION-M2. Among numerous aspects of maintaining animals, the most essential is water and type of diet. On BION-M1, mice consumed a paste-like food that caused some undesirable effects. We decided to use dry pellets combined with slightly gelled water (1.5 % carboxymethyl cellulose) that will simplify a drinker substantially. We thought it would be useful to assess the dependence of mice wellbeing on diet under the conditions onboard spacecraft series BION-M. We tested 3 pellets of varying content, and a paste-like food that had been used in the space experiments. For the purpose of testing and gathering the ground control data, a chamber was designed in which microclimate and air composition dynamics imitated those in space missions as close as possible. The 33-day test was performed with 75 adult male white mice Balb/. There was no fundamental difference in the condition of animals fed with pellets and paste-like food. In future, we intend to give mice pallets + gelled water with a useful mass of 8.8 g/day per a mouse. Useful mass of the paste-like food is two times larger, i.e. 16.6 g/day per a mouse. Pattern of microbial contamination looks generally quite steady. What worries is a small increase of contamination of the gelled water pipeline; possible retrograde contamination from the drinker should not be ignored.