[DefCon]

...having strange mental image of a hamster in one of those acrylic balls rolling around all over the place...

[joesnuffy]

Yep and by the time humans get to Mars...it will be crawling with mice...
Better sends cats next..

[tet68]

This looks like as good a place for "Cheese" as anywhere.

Love those mices,
meeces I love to eat.
bite they little heads off,
nibble on they tiny feet.

[In_25_words_or_less]

The 15 mice will orbit Earth for five weeks to help researchers learn how Martian gravity - about one-third that of Earth - will affect the mammalian body. Then their craft will parachute back to Earth, bouncing down swaddled in airbags in the outback of Australia.

Back in the day they would have just left 'em up there with the little wires still up their kazoos.

[unibrowshift9b20]

Wait. Europe is going to send MICE to Mars? And then (even more crazily), BACK? Are they off their rockers? Either they're crazy or socialism worked out and they've got WAY to much money bouncing around in the account.

Here's what they should do: From all indications in zero-g, bone density loss is a direct relationship with time and it doesn't ever level off. I don't see why 1/3 g should not also be a similarly direct relationship, except 1/3 that of zero-g. So, if you get a spinning torus on the way there and back, you are only in 1/3 g for 1 year. And you could go back to your orbiting torus occasionally. 1 year in 1/3 g I presume is equivalent to 8 months in zero g. Now, this is a lot, but Russian guys have stayed up there much longer than that, and ISS people go on 6 month trips.

And even if that isn't right, They should just build a rotating torus in orbit, maybe 20 meters in diameter, inflatable, and you can actually put people in it at whatever centrifugal acceleration you like. Slightly more expensive than shipping mice to Mars and back, but you'll get much better results, and people won't laugh at you.