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The nicely and carefully written question Have any animals that have been studied onboard the ISS come back alive? has an affirmative answer that applies to the space shuttle. Now that return to Earth comes in capsule form, have animals ever returned live to the surface — by design?

uhoh
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    Not counting homo sapiens animals, I assume? – Organic Marble Feb 25 '17 at 19:06
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    @OrganicMarble I have heard that at least in the early days, the astronaut ecperience may have sometimes felt like being an experimental subject, but in this case I mean the ones riding as cargo, not with seats. :) – uhoh Feb 25 '17 at 23:02
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    Did you see the commentary about the zebrafish on the linked question? – called2voyage Mar 01 '17 at 15:41
  • @called2voyage Comments and answers are like zebras and fish - two different things. I think I still remember how hard you worked to teach me that comments could suddenly "be disappeared" at any moment without warning, so I strive to move useful information to slightly more durable answers. :) Here or there is fine, as long as there's some link or citation. We can mark this one as a duplicate if needed. – uhoh Mar 01 '17 at 15:53
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    @uhoh I agree it needs to be made into an actual answer, but I wanted to make sure that you saw the information that technically answers your question. – called2voyage Mar 01 '17 at 15:54
  • @called2voyage Oh I see! No I hadn't seen it, thanks for mentioning those comments - I must have skimmed over everything too quickly, thanks. There's even a tweet about a fish named after a zebra! – uhoh Mar 01 '17 at 16:22
  • I'm still waiting for someone to post an answer explaining that humans are certainly animals and experimented on; kept in confined spaces, forced to run for hours, poked, prodded, sampled, measured and observed, and generally returned to Earth alive, so I've un-accepted my answer ;-) – uhoh Apr 23 '20 at 02:23
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    @uhoh But haven't you ruled out that interpretation by your very first comment above, where you restricted the question to animals "riding as cargo"? – TooTea Apr 23 '20 at 07:11
  • @TooTea You are right. Rats! (pun intended) – uhoh Apr 23 '20 at 07:14

3 Answers3

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Yes.

A nice example would be the recent splashdown of the first SpaceX Dragon capsule to have been re-used after a previous visit to the ISS.

See for example Spaceflight Now's July 3, 2017 article Dragon capsule returns home with animals and station equipment:

Items stowed for Dragon’s return included live mice from an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of a therapeutic drug to promote bone growth, combating atrophy in astronauts in space and osteoporosis patients on Earth. The mice will be euthanized and examined after landing.

below: "The Dragon spacecraft was lifted onto a boat for a trip back to port in Southern California following Monday’s predawn splashdown. Credit: SpaceX" From here.

enter image description here

uhoh
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Other answers focused on Rodent Research, which is long running series of experiments which often have live rodents returned to Earth. One such experiment was Rodent Research 6.

Other examples include:

Fruit Fly Lab 02

  • Live fruit flies that hatched in space were returned to Earth on SpaceX-11. enter image description here

XENOGRISS

  • Live tadpoles were flown and returned to Earth on SpaceX-19. enter image description here
Doresoom
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Rodent research is a big science objective for NASA. NASA and JAXA send rodents via Dragon and Cygnus capsules very frequently, and they are returned to Earth via Dragon re-entry.

Here's a 40+ page review:

And from this NASA.gov mission page: Rodent Research - Active Mission please see:

Rodent Research-5

The topic of study on this mission was bone tissue loss – a challenge for the health of astronauts, as well as for people on Earth suffering from osteoporosis. For the experiment, a group of mice was launched to the space station in June 2017. Half of them returned to Earth one month later, while the other half remained in space for a full two months. This allowed the researchers – a team based at University of California, Los Angeles – to study the effects of a potential treatment for bone loss, and how the body readapts to Earth conditions after an extended stay in microgravity.

uhoh
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fonsi
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    All links go to 404 – Organic Marble Apr 23 '20 at 19:20
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    This is also what's called a link-only answer. Even if the links worked, there is no answer here, one would have to go off-site to get any real answer. Can you quote some short sections of each link that answer the question so that this becomes a stand-alone answer? Thanks! – uhoh Apr 23 '20 at 20:23
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    @OrganicMarble links fixed (it seems they were given more permanent homes?) – uhoh Feb 27 '24 at 00:39