Kosmos 936


Kosmos 936 or Bion 4 was a Bion satellite. The mission involved nine countries in a series of biomedical research experiments. The experiments were primarily follow-ups to the Bion 3 flight. Scientists from the Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Soviet Union and the United States conducted experiments in physics and biology on the mission.

Launch and mission

Kosmos 936 was launched on August 3, 1977, by a Soyuz rocket from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Soviet Union. The mission ended after 19.5 days.
The mission was to conduct various biological studies, continuing the Bion 3 mission experiments. He had two centrifuges on board to put some specimens in an artificial gravity environment. An attempt was made to differentiate, using rats, between the effects caused by space flight itself from those caused by stress. The effects of flight on muscle and bone, on red cell survival, and on lipid and carbohydrate metabolism were also studied, and an experiment with rats on the effects of space radiation on the retina was conducted.
One of the instruments studied the physical parameters of the components of space radiation. Fruit flies were used in genetic and aging studies. A group of rats of the Rattus norvegicus species were sent, with an average weight of at launch and 62 days of age. Twenty of the rats experienced microgravity and the other ten were subjected to the artificial gravity of the centrifuge.