The biological payload on the spacecraft included 2 monkeys, 10 rats, fruit flies, grasshoppers, beetles, guppies, Hynobiidae, Chlorella ciliate, newts and corn.

The other countries involved in conducting experiments on the mission were the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the East Germany, France, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

The United States was responsible for developing flight and ground-based hardware, verifying testing of hardware and experiment procedures, developing rat tissue sampling procedures, and transferring tissues and data from the Soviet Union after the flight.

Other studies investigated changes in the immune, nervous and reproductive systems, in muscle and connective tissue and in skeletal and mineral homeostasis.

Another experiment was conducted to evaluate radiation exposure during the flight and to measure the shielding effectiveness of the spacecraft.