Chinese researchers plan to send monkeys to the country's Tiangong space station so that the primates can have sex… for science! From the South China Morning Post:
After studying smaller creatures, "some studies involving mice and macaques will be carried out to see how they grow or even reproduce in space", Zhang said in a speech posted on social media by the academy on Monday.
"These experiments will help improve our understanding of an organism's adaptation to microgravity and other space environments."[…]
As more nations plan for long-term settlements in orbit around the moon or Mars, "these experiments will be necessary", [Tsinghua University space medicine researcher Kehkooi] Kee said[…]
NASA says no astronauts, to the best of its knowledge, have had sex in space[…]
"Firstly, just staying in close contact with each other under zero gravity is hard," [University of Nottingham reproductive and developmental physiologist Adam] Watkins said in a letter to Physiology News Magazine in 2020. "Secondly, as astronauts experience lower blood pressure while in space, maintaining erections and arousal are more problematic than here on Earth.
