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| Fish In Space |
 Sixty baby cichlid fish were rocketed into space on Monday by German scientists to study how the fish would react to weightlessness. The fish were sent on a two-stage rocket 160 miles into space from Sweden's Esrange Space Center on a 36 foot Texus vessel.
Some of the fish will enjoy the ride in what Reuters reported to be a "pure zero G state," floating aimlessly about the vessel, while others will be in a slowly-turning centrifuge. "They use fish since it's much easier to investigate on fish [than] human beings," Thomas Hedqvist, Esrange Space Centre project manager, told The Register.
Video footage of their trip will be studied upon arrival back on Earth by experimenters Reinhard Hilbig and Ralf Anken from the University of Stuttgart-Hoheheim. Special attention will be paid to probing the "small balance organs," called otoliths, to see how the fish coped with their weightlessness.
"Fish, when they get motion sick, being tumbling around, swimming in circles and miss their balance," Hedqvist said. "People, when they are aboard the space shuttle, they have this space motion sickness also. Human beings have blood pressure up in the head when they are weightless and also bones get weak and muscles get small."
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