Soviet Space Monkey Survives Errant Landing, Will Be Spared

Yarosha, the wayward monkey that broke partly free during a space experiment and began playing with equipment, survived the landing of the descent module more than a thousand miles from its target zone, the Tass news agency said Tuesday.

Soviet scientists reported on reaching the capsule in the Yakutia region of eastern Siberia that a second monkey and other passengers were also feeling fine after the landing on Monday, Tass said.

Experts at ground control had considered aborting the flight after Yarosha, whose name means “troublemaker” in Russian, worked his left arm free from a restraint on the fifth day of the mission and toyed with everything within reach.

Previous monkey-cosmonauts, like other animals sent into space by the Soviet Union, have been killed for vivisection. But scientists say Yarosha will be spared because his televised antics had made him a favorite of the Soviet public.

The flight was launched Sept. 29 to study the effects of weightlessness on living organisms. The capsule was to have landed near Baikonur in Kazakhstan, but came down instead near the Siberian city of Mirny.