Mission type Bioscience SATCAT no. 06913 Spacecraft type Bion | COSPAR ID 1973-083A Mission duration 21.5 days Launch date 31 October 1973 | |
Operator Institute of Biomedical Problems Similar Kosmos 1129, Kosmos 1514, Kosmos 936, Kosmos 1667 | ||
Kosmos 605 (Russian: Космос 605 meaning Cosmos 605), or Bion No.1 was a Bion satellite.
Contents
Mission
It carried several dozen male rats (possibly 25 or 45), six Russian tortoises (Agrionemys horsfieldii) (each in a separate box), a mushroom bed, flour beetles (Tribolium confusum) in various stages of their life cycle, and living bacterial spores. It provided data on the reaction of mammal, reptile, insect, fungal, and bacterial forms to prolonged weightlessness.
Launch
Kosmos 605 was launched by a Soyuz-U rocket flying from Site 43/3 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union. The satellite was initially launched in a low Earth orbit with a perigee of 221 kilometers and a 424 km apogee with an orbital inclination of 62.8 degrees. The spacecraft orbited the Earth for 21 days until their biological capsule returned to Earth on November 22, 1973 in a region of northwestern present-day Kazakhstan.