OCR Text |
Show Ants travel in space They may seem likely pioneers, but the first colony of earth's creatures to travel in space a group of carpenter ants blasted off aboard NASA's Space Shuttle STS-7 as part of an experiment ex-periment designed by students from two high schools in Camden, New Jersey The experiment called "Orbit '81," studies the effect of prolonged weightlessness on the tiny travelers. Ants were chosen as the subject of the experiment for a variety of reasons, most important of which is their highly sophisticated social structure, struc-ture, perhaps the nearest approach to human civilization in the insect world. The four month average lifespan of the carpenter ant makes it likely that birth, death and other major events in the ants' life cycle will occur during the Space Shuttle's one week voyage. The experiments are documented by a movie camera and video tape camera. The space voyage could affect the ants in numerous ways, scientists say. Ants that are born and grow outside of gravity might turn out to be bigger than other ants. The Plexiglass habitat where the ants will reside was designed by the students in the program, sponsored by RCA Corporation, which has helped stimulate interest in science ;ind engineering among the students at Camden and Woodrow Wilson High Schools in New Jersey for several years. |