Jul 5 1983
From The Space Library
A colony of carpenter ants flown on the shuttle Challenger in June had apparently not survived the trip. Press reponse said that no signs of life were seen through the clear plastic top of the casing housing the 151 ants. The sponsors, students from two New Jersey high schools who flew to Cape Canaveral with a teacher to recover the experiment, checked heat and light supply to the canister, as well as the cameras-one making periodic exposures and the other recording on television tape-that monitored the ants in flight. Everything worked. RCA Corporation had supported the experiment with a $10,000 grant.
Press reports noted that the ants had been inside Challenger's cargo bay almost two months before launch and might have died before the flight; however, two control colonies in New Jersey had survived under the same conditions. The canister would be opened in New Jersey in the presence of two biology professors from Temple University who were advisers to the students. (W Post, July 7/83, A-2)
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