Overview

• Roscosmos launched Bion‑M 2 on August 20 from Baikonur for a 30‑day polar mission, and the capsule landed on September 19 in Russia’s Orenburg steppe with all organisms reported in good condition.
• The 6.4‑ton spacecraft carried 75 male mice, about 1,500 fruit flies, plants, cell cultures, fungi, lichens, and seeds including material linked to prior Bion‑M 1 and Photon‑M 4 missions.
• Mice were housed in 25 boxes with implanted sensors tracking metrics such as body temperature and heart rate, with two duplicated ground cohorts of 75 mice each for controlled comparison.
• Feeding was automated with 15 mice on dry food to probe water‑salt metabolism and 60 on paste, among which nine were classified radiation‑vulnerable, nine radiation‑resistant via pharmacocorrection, and 42 standard responders.
• An external meteorite simulator exposed living cells to reentry conditions, while roughly 12 terabytes of video and other data now enter review expected to take about a year for core findings and more than two years for full video analysis using AI acceleration.