Use of a primate as an experimental model on board SPACELAB: definition of a two-primate biological facility

The necessity of studying on an animal model the effects of the space environment on the major physiological functions has led the Centre de Recherches de Medecine Aeronautique to develop a two-primate experiment biological facility for SPACELAB. The general principle followed throughout all the phases of this project is that the facility is designed to be used, not for one specific experiment, but by the largest possible number of researchers. We describe here the justification for a primate animal model, the technological features of the biological module and several experiments designed to test certain hypotheses with regard to physiology and pathology.