The US Experiments Flown on the Soviet Biosatellite Cosmos 1887

Cosmos 1887, a biosatellite containing biological and radiation experiments from the Soviet Union, the United States and seven other countries, was launched on September 29, 1987. One Rhesus monkey's feeder stopped working two days into the flight and a decision was made to terminate the mission after 12 1/2 days. The biosatellite returned to Earth on October 12, 1987. A system malfunction, during the reentry procedure, caused the Cosmos 1887 spacecraft to land approximately 1800 miles beyond the intended landing site and delayed the start of the postflight procedures by approximately 44 hours. Further information on the conditions at landing and postflight activities is included in the Mission Operations portion of this document. U.S. and U.S.S.R. specialists jointly conducted 26 experiments on this mission, including the postflight transfer of data, hardware and biosamples to the U.S.