The Bion program, which began in 1966, included a series of missions that flew biological experiments using primates, rodents, insects, cells, and plants on a biosatellite in near Earth orbit.

[3] In 2005, the Bion program was resumed with three new satellites of the modified Bion-M type – the first flight was launched on 19 April 2013 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

The first satellite of the new series Bion-M1 featured an aquarium by the German Aerospace Center (DLR)[4] and carried 45 mice, 18 Mongolian gerbils, 15 geckos, snails, fish and micro-organisms into orbit for 30 days before re-entry and recovery.

[5][6] All the gerbils died due to a hardware failure, but condition of the rest of the experiments, including all geckos, was satisfactory.

[8] The orbiter will carry 75 mice and studies will focus on how they are affected at the molecular level by space radiation.