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Recoverable Satellite for Animal Research    Toshimasa Ochiai, Hiroaki Matsumoto, Koji Shimura,      Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Japan

   Development of recoverable satellite for animal research has been conducted. The satellite, which is a capsule-type reentry vehicle, is launched on a piggyback configuration. At a first demonstration flight, it is capable to take three mice aboard with 0.001G condition for about 2 hours, and return them to the earth safely. The acceleration during the reentry is held below 4G and the satellite is guided to the recovery site for early access to the payload. In the future, it will be capable to take more than five mice aboard for more than 14 days.

   Our aim of this experiment system is to offer the flight chance with low cost and frequent opportunity in space biological, medical and pharmaceutical sciences. And animal experiment on orbit will be useful to medical science on the ground, and contribute to succeed to human space activity in the future. We have studied hardware specifications in consideration of both scientific requirements and technical feasibility.　The current status of our study is reported and also the capability of this new system is discussed.