posted 10-04-2008 11:01 PM               

Just as the panel was unwilling to recommend cutting short the tests of the scientific instruments to be flown, so, with four of the eighteen months of the IGY already gone, members saw the impracticality of looking for new, still undeveloped, onboard experiments. They stood by that decision even after Sputnik II carrying the dog Laika on her week-long journey evoked questions about expanding the American program to include experiments in the life sciences. Although a biologist at the National Institutes of Health had already submitted a proposal to study the effects of radiation on yeast cells in the vacuum of space, and although the Vanguard scientific group thought the package would fit into the 6.4- inch satellite, the panel concluded that that experiment, like other more complex new schemes, would have to await a post-IGY program.